Papernest

We use an interactive website and ethnographic film to contextualize the history of the commodification of insects as traditional food, natural dye, and trendy tourist fare in Oaxaca, Mexico. We are a three-person interdisciplinary team of amateur filmmakers, consisting of anthropology faculty, undergraduate student and alumna, who met through our work with our institution’s Digital Humanities Institute. We incorporate photography, film, and archival research to explore insect uses and imaginaries which take many forms in Oaxaca, a state boasting the greatest cultural, linguistic, and biological diversity in Mexico. This presentation describes research-driven visual methods examining current political economies surrounding the commodification of insects. Pfister’s research uses anthropological and humanistic approaches to explore Oaxaca’s rich cultural and culinary history and contrast it with colonial and EuroAmerican ambivalence toward insects. Our multimedias explore various ways that globalized and climatic changes impact our participants economically, socially, and ecologically, and how their lived experiences might be representative of broader post-colonial tensions and realities (Pfister and Gaytán 2024). Papernest is an interactive website, hosting a gallery of images, film clips and ideas related to human-insect relationships. We use images and participatory methods to engender resonances and contradictions between long-standing traditions and newly-emerging narratives surrounding insects – these reactions range from shock and disgust, to energies toward “rediscovery” of trendy Mexican “super foods” (Katz and Lazos 2016) and natural dyes with longstanding cultural significance in Oaxaca. Project accessible at https://papernest.domains.unf.edu/.