Paella, Memetic Desire, and the Architecture of Waiting
A bone in the paella. A letter left on read.
(Research note: Leaning on Bosch 2025’s warning that “decolonisation is not a vibe,” this essay treats waiting as an anti-gobalisation design move rather than a UX flaw).
Introduction
This piece reflects on a minor breakdown at a paella joint in Seville to explore how systems—human and technological—handle misaligned expectations, desire, and silence. It introduces memetic desire, touches on regenerative friction, and concludes with the author's refusal to proceed—until a specific signal is received.
There was a time in Spain—a warm evening in Seville, a table for three, and a dish that looked suspiciously like biryani. We had just finished running through the winding lanes of the city when someone joked, "This is just Spain's version of biryani, isn't it?"
We laughed. The resemblance was uncanny: saffron rice, vegetables, broth, a performative flourish of authenticity. We ordered the vegetarian paella. Then came the bone.
A vegetarian order had delivered a very non-vegetarian surprise. A burst of broken Spanish, Google Translate diplomacy, and synced frustration followed. Despite our differences, all three of us reacted the same way—decisive, slightly theatrical, entirely Indian. The restaurant's peace offering? Free wine.
Of course, it had to be wine. Abroad, when food goes wrong, it’s the universal fix. The man orders, something gets messed up, the woman catches it, and before a real apology—there’s wine. It felt oddly familiar, like when a rasgulla replaces accountability at an Indian wedding. Fermented grapes this time. Same energy.
I. What Desire Is Made Of
That moment stuck with me. Because it wasn’t really about paella.
In fact, our desire for paella might not have even been about paella. It may have been a craving inherited from generations of biryani-lovers—a deep, encoded yearning for something communal, spiced, and slow-cooked in ceremony. The resemblance wasn’t a coincidence. We saw biryani because, in some way, we were looking for it.
What we consumed that evening wasn’t just food. It was a projected memory—a craving shaped by stories, inherited rituals, and cultural echoes. And this is where the layers deepen.
It was about memetic desire—a concept by René Girard. We don’t want in isolation. We mimic. We model. We want what others seem to want. What we ordered was food; what we performed was appetite.
“Characters in these novels rely on other characters to show them what is worth wanting… Desire, like gravity, does not reside autonomously in any one thing or person. It lives in the space between them.”
— Burgis (2021), Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life (2021)
That “space between” explains why our eyes saw biryani in a Spanish skillet: we were copying a hunger we’d inherited—not inventing a new one.
This is how many systems fail: not through collapse, but through subtle imitation, drift, and unspoken assumptions.
Paella didn’t come from biryani. But both emerged from cultures of sharing, empire, and adaptation—proof that food, like desire, is always layered.
When we copy desires without thinking, we replay the same old power games. Bosch (2025) argues this mindless copying keeps colonial hierarchies intact—just like that stray bone in our “vegetarian” paella shows on a smaller scale.
II. System Pause: A Meta Interlude
Some weeks ago, I wrote a letter. To someone who sat at that same table in Seville. The one who joked about biryani. Who argued about the bone. Who got us wine.
And now I wonder—can she negotiate a reply to my letter with the same ease?
It was a confession. Not to a system. But to a person. Though these days, the difference feels blurry.
The signal never came.
So, like any well-designed system, I’ve placed my emotional processing in pending state.
No response received.
No action can proceed.
The system isn’t broken. Just waiting.
Refusal to proceed isn’t a glitch; it’s what Bosch calls an epistemic refusal—a strategic halt that forces the infrastructure to declare whose needs it really serves.
III. Regenerative Desire
In enterprise systems, epistemic friction slows things down—creates space for scrutiny, reflection, and change. Desire needs that too.
Without friction, desire becomes extractive. With it, it becomes regenerative: layered, honest, evolving.
What I asked for wasn’t closure, but participation. A co-created signal. A moment of truth-checking:
“Is this real? Or just mimicked momentum?”
Until then, I pause. Not out of pride, but principle.
IV. No Paella, No Progress
So here we are. Like that failed paella—too many inputs, one hidden flaw—I’m shelving the next course.
Your meal won’t be delivered.
System is in reflective loop.
One signal missing.
This isn’t a romantic gesture. It’s a design decision.
For those unfamiliar with the biryani theorist or the context of this exchange, you may consult the original source material: Seeds of Sovereignty (see author’s previous submission, Kadel, 2025). And for further reading on the epistemic architecture underpinning this delay, the author’s position paper is available here.
Taken together with Seeds of Sovereignty (Kadel 2025), Bosch’s praxis frames ‘graceful delay’ not as UX ornament but as the first act of infrastructural redistribution.
References
Kadel, A. (2025, June 26). Seeds of sovereignty: Designing regenerative AI for plural epistemologies [Preprint]. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/f9e65_v2
Bosch, T. (2025). Decolonisation is not a vibe: On anti-capitalist praxis, citation politics and epistemic refusal. Media, Culture & Society. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437251360382
Burgis, L. (2021). Wanting: The power of mimetic desire in everyday life. St. Martin’s Press.
🔀 Meta-status: Waiting. Possibly forever. Possibly not.
Before the Next Scroll...
A reply was received—quiet, like rain on parchment. Not everything was said. But something was understood.