Introduction

Summary

[S]ugar calls up the binary rhythm of law and work, of patriarchal hierarchy, of scientific knowledge, of punishment and discipline, of superego and castration; it is the space … of production and productivity, of rule and measure, of ideology and nationalism, of the computer that speaks and separates; it is, above all, the signifier that offers itself as center, as origin, as fixed destination, for that which signifies the Other.

– Antonio Benítez-Rojo, The Repeating Island

[T]hey have no leisure for the cultivation of aught but their estates, – & limit the alphabet to 5 letters, S – U – G – A – R.

– John Anderson, A Magistrate's Recollections, or St. Vincent, in 1836

White/Black

Towards the beginning of her autobiography, Harriet Martineau recalls a mysterious dream occurring in early childhood. Given the nature of its content – a return to the domestic space and to the mother – it might be assumed that the dream would engender a sense of well-being, an expectation increased by the additional oneiric presence of the commodity to which all children are automatically drawn: sugar. In the event, however, the dream has the opposite effect, bringing neither comfort nor pleasure, but a chilling disquiet:

By the time we were at our own door, it was dusk, and we went up the steps in the dark; but in the kitchen it was bright sunshine. My mother was standing at the dresser, breaking sugar; and she lifted me up, and set me in the sun, and gave me a bit of sugar. Such was the dream which froze me with horror!