Showcasing papers from researchers working across multiple disciplines, including anthropology, politics, heritage studies and art history, the colloquium will offer new perspectives on the relationship between food and aesthetics.
Sonakshi Srivastava, University of Delhi - The Curious Case of Food, GI Tag, and Lawsuits
There is an instance in Intizar Husain’s popular novel, Basti, where, while dining at the Shiraz, a restaurant in the newly created Pakistan, discussion ensues about the authenticity of the identity of the bread seller, Nuru. He boasts of being a ‘pure bred Ambala man’, an assertion that seems out of place to the people in the new land, prodding Karnaliya, a fellow diner to remark that ‘they have added Ambali to their names just for prestige. I’m the only one from Ambala! That’s why they can’t meet my eyes’.
This discussion is particularly relevant in the novel for its layered connotations of identity, nostalgia, and nation/al boundaries in the face of the partition of the British India. And before one is quick to dismiss any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events, as purely coincidental with a click of the tongue, attention must be drawn to the Rupees 50-crore Tunday Kebab Lawsuit. The lawsuit is one glaring example that teases the boundaries of fact and fiction, and one which can be located in the familiar matrix of identity, authenticity and nostalgia as is the instance from the novel.
I claim attention to this teasing of fiction from fact specifically because food and drink as everyday preoccupations cut across the shadowy lines of borders, and nationalities. Cyber wars exist to lay claim to the authenticity of biryani and its local variants, the “real” kebabs, and its imitations around.
Through this paper I seek to explore the intertwined and contested notions of “authenticity” and “heritage” in the face of certain food items that proliferate the lives of the Indian and Pakistani citizens alike, and how these food wars have also given birth to the idea of GI (geographical indication) Tags, which again remain highly contestable. By taking into account particular instances from the food history of India and Pakistan, my paper seeks to navigate through the contested terrains of authenticity that continues to remain couched in a particular geographical area.
Speaker Bio
Sonakshi Srivastava graduated from the University of Delhi in 2020, and is now an MPhil scholar at Indraprastha University, Delhi, where she researches on the aesthetics of emotions and the long 18th Century. Currently, she is the Oceanvale Scholar for the Spring-Autumn session at Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi, where she is researching on the aesthetics of emotions in Kobo Abe’s novels. Her works have previously published in the eSharp Journal, and as chapters in two edited volumes, and a recent piece for the TMR. Her areas of interests include aesthetics and critical theory, memory and trauma studies, animal studies and ethics, food studies, and Indian Writing in English, among others.
Lede E Miki Pohshna, North Eastern Hill University - The Quest for Egalitarianism: Materiality, Embodiment and sharing of Kwai in Khasi community.
Kwai, which is a Khasi recreational snack made up of a mixture of areca nuts, betel leaves, tobacco and lime, is used in all Khasi household as food offering to the guests regardless of their status. The origin of this snack can be traced back to a particular legend of U Kwai, Tympew, Shun bad Duma Sla. This legends stresses on the need for a food that can be shared by everyone across the social strata which can also be received as such by all strata. This paper will examine the issues of egalitarianism in the tribal society of the Khasis and argue that Kwai serves as an important signifier of equality. Moreover, the paper will examine the embodiment of social strata in the food and how all these strata are being united when consumed. As such, this paper will examine the idea of equality among the Khasi community and how food plays a very important role in deconstructing inequalities in societal hierarchies.
Speaker Bio
Lede E Miki Pohshna is a PhD research scholar in the department of English, North Eastern Hill University. His research interest is on Queer writings in general and South Asian Queer Fiction in particular. He enjoys writings that try to understand the human predicament and its darker side. He writes poems, short stories and attempts to complete a novel. Currently he divides his time between Shillong and Sohkha Mission, his native village.
Simran Dhingra, Jamia Millia Islamia - “To Eat or Not to Eat?” India’s beef conundrum and the politics of food
Food continues to be a matter of contestation in India, the growing waves of nationalism and hostility towards ‘others’ has caused a heightened surveillance of what’s on one’s plate. Cow, perceived as a sacred animal, is revered in religious philosophies of Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism, thus their slaughter is frowned upon. It appears paradoxical for a country that ranks a dismal 94 on World Hunger Index (2020), placed in the “serious hunger” category to deliberate over what citizens eat rather than focusing on tackling hunger/poverty. The growing resentment and curbing of freedom can be traced back to the rise of the Bharata Janata Party, that swept landslide victory and came to power in 2014. Their beliefs in Hindu religious superiority and their unofficial manifesto of promoting Hindu ideologies and practices, terming any opposition or resistance as ‘anti national’ have been detrimental to India’s progress and commitment to democratic, secular principals.
Currently, the atmosphere in India for the Muslim communities has been that of abject horror, anxiety and distress. Since 2015 there have been hundreds of inhumane mob lynchings where Muslims have been brutally tortured and murdered at the slightest suspicions of storing/cooking beef inside their homes; most of these accusations turned out to be false rumors but the victims’ families never got justice. New laws against cow slaughter are being implemented and beef bans widely cropping up, ‘cow vigilant groups’ are being formed, the unemployed youth being brainwashed into taking up violence for protecting Hindutva ideology. The paper will discuss these aspects of political contestation of food and the ideological force driving these hostile sentiments.
Speaker Bio
Simran Dhingra is pursuing a Master’s in Conflict Analysis and Peace Building from Jamia Millia Islamia, India. She has completed her undergraduate studies from the University of Delhi, in BA Honours Humanities and Social Sciences; with a major in English Literature and minor in Journalism. She is currently working as a Communications Intern at United Nations Global Compact Network, India. An avid reader, she constantly seeks to understand the world around her and challenge the preexisting knowledge, beliefs concerning prominent socio-cultural issues in society. As a budding researcher her main areas of interest are Women’s writing, Postcolonial literature, Realism and Ecocriticism.
Carolina Gallarini, UEA - Edible and Folded Identity: Food and its Visual Aspect as Cultural Heritage in Kanaky/New Caledonia.
Since the early 1980s, Kanak people have highlighted their identity to represent themselves in the Melanesian context. This political work on the self-representation of Kanaky/New Caledonia was initiated by local politics, determined to gain independence from French colonialism peacefully. Nowadays, Kanak are still struggling to gain sovereignty in their country, using identity symbols to show their history and connection with the land.
One of the most studied identity markers in anthropology is food, which is conceptualized as part of the cultural heritage by societies and individuals. Food and its rules or rituals of preparation create categorizations that connect to social identity.
Historical recipes are a cultural symbol in Kanaky/New Caledonia as well, where it is possible to notice a strong correlation with their colonial history and food production. Moreover, the main ingredients of Kanak recipes represent their cosmology, also highlighted by the respect and time dedicated to the preparation of the dishes. The typical dish, called bougna, is prepared with taro, yam, sweet potato, banana, and a source of proteins. Women usually cook this dish for the feasts, folding the banana leaves that contain the final plate.
This intervention will introduce the Kanak history through food production to better understand its link with cultural memory and identity. In addition, some photos collected in a digital ethnographic will be shown to explain the preparation and aesthetics of these dishes.
Hélène Binesse, UEA - Exploring the invisible power relations ‘steaming’ from the pot of ceebu jën in Senegal
To undertake my doctoral study in adult literacy and learning, I volunteered in an education Non-Governmental Organisation in Malika, a town in the suburbs of Dakar in Senegal and lived in the home of a Senegalese family.
During my fieldwork, eating was a daily social activity as I never had lunch or dinner on my own. At the NGO, the food was delivered in a large common pot; everyday sitting on the mat we were all looking at the pot to discover what was the dish of the day. Rice was not a surprise, but the sauce, the fish and the vegetable made the difference and gave a sense of variety to the national dish ceebu jën, rice and fish. It was always a festival of colours and savours and not only at the NGO.
Drawing on a ten-month ethnographic study in Malika, I will describe the mundane everyday food practices, from buying the supplies, to cooking and eating together that I observed and engaged in. Through this presentation, I will explore the local practices and beliefs around cooking and eating, how some are transmitted through generations, others intensified by the food industry. I look in particular at how some roles like nourishing and serving food, in most cases performed by women, are reflecting identities around care and how food advertisements use the image of the ‘good’ housewife.
Speaker Bio
Hélène Binesse is a PhD Researcher in education and development at UEA. Drawing on a 10-month ethnographic study, she is exploring communicative practices around health and nutrition in Malika, a town in the suburbs of Dakar in Senegal. She is particularly interested in the informal learning processes taking place in this community, the mediation of resources by trusted members and how adults engage with this information. She holds a Master degree in teaching French as a foreign language and worked for 10 years on educational matters in Eritrea, Yemen, South Africa, Uganda, Afghanistan and UNESCO Paris.
Weibe Copman, Columbia University - Aesthetics of food in Instagram Stories and the authenticity of the everyday
This paper will focus on the aesthetical strategies employed to heighten the authenticity of the everyday. I want to draw parallels between Instagram and the diary film; I am struck by the diaristic tone of social media posts in general and Instagram “stories” in specific. These stories allow users to intensify the audiovisual communication of the “here and now” of their everyday realities; the premise of Instagram’s instantaneity culminates in the extensive use of these stories, all of which remain visible for only twenty-four hours. Phones have become instruments of audiovisual diaristic documentation and Instagram the main platform of their exhibition. Posting videos as temporally finite Instagram stories, with no editing involved, users create a “lyrical reality” of their mundane lives—which, during the pandemic, users documented extensively, often focusing on their culinary experiments in the kitchen. Our approach to Instagram resembles the practices of the diary filmmaker: mere diaristic documentation becomes an investigation into everyday experiences, and by fixing our gaze on details of our mundane reality, Instagram summons us to consider these moments as auratic.
To illustrate my point, I will concentrate mainly on two case-studies, drawing attention to their unexpected similarities; American filmmaker Holly Fisher’s Chickenstew (1978), a structural take on the diary film, and British chef Anna Jones’ Instagram TV-videos, shot in one single take in her parents’ garden shed during the first COVID-lockdown.
Speaker Bio
My background is in art studies and literature, but I also very recently graduated from Columbia University’s master’s program in Film and Media Studies with a thesis on food media. For the colloquium, I want to propose a revised version of my thesis, incorporating work I have done on avant-garde essayistic traditions.
I wrote my thesis on food as a performative vehicle used to construct an (auto)biography of auratic experiences of the everyday. Inspired by Benjamin, I first considered food (as it is defined to a particular “here and now”) to contain an authentic aura on its own, as if it were a work of art; second, I argued that food media, in its representation of food, create a wholly new, auratic experience—that is, the medium in itself becomes an object of aura.
Dr Betsy Moss - Abundance and Poverty: Aesthetics of Food Insecurity in Canadian Art
In Canada, the number of people experiencing food insecurity increased from 12.5% in 2018 to 14.6%, or 4.5 million people, as of May 2020. The economic effects of the global pandemic caused this increase and exacerbated the existing imbalance in social supports and policies in which at least one in eight Canadian households experienced food insecurity before the pandemic. We know that food insecurity is caused by poverty, and that the experience of food scarcity is closely linked to systems of food distribution and access.
How do artists working in Canada represent food insecurity? What are the visual qualities, symbols, and conceptual frameworks of artworks designed to inspire and ignite community and government action to solve this problem? I argue that the way food is depicted in recent Canadian art devoted to this social justice issue emphasizes the abundant and life-giving qualities of food at the expense of addressing the policies and systemic issues that cause people in Canada to experience food insecurity.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Betsy Moss is an instructor of art history and the theory of art in Toronto, Canada, where she completed her PhD at the University of Toronto in 2016. Her dissertation research focused on the adornment of Byzantine icons from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The newly developed decorative vocabulary situated devotional images within a spatial and temporal frame that incorporated depictions the entire cycle of Orthodox liturgical seasons.
This research on the aesthetics of food insecurity in Canadian art marks a turn in her research in which she combines her passion for spiritually and socially engaged art with her commitment to increasing food security in her local neighborhood. As a volunteer with the Avenue Road Food Bank, she regularly interacts with other volunteers and clients who are hungry for beauty and a sense of connection with the world around them. In addition to teaching, she also produces a podcast on teaching Buddhist Studies in Higher Education and is raising three amazing kids.
There is an instance in Intizar Husain’s popular novel, Basti, where, while dining at the Shiraz, a restaurant in the newly created Pakistan, discussion ensues about the authenticity of the identity of the bread seller, Nuru. He boasts of being a ‘pure bred Ambala man’, an assertion that seems out of place to the people in the new land, prodding Karnaliya, a fellow diner to remark that ‘they have added Ambali to their names just for prestige. I’m the only one from Ambala! That’s why they can’t meet my eyes’.
This discussion is particularly relevant in the novel for its layered connotations of identity, nostalgia, and nation/al boundaries in the face of the partition of the British India. And before one is quick to dismiss any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events, as purely coincidental with a click of the tongue, attention must be drawn to the Rupees 50-crore Tunday Kebab Lawsuit. The lawsuit is one glaring example that teases the boundaries of fact and fiction, and one which can be located in the familiar matrix of identity, authenticity and nostalgia as is the instance from the novel.
I claim attention to this teasing of fiction from fact specifically because food and drink as everyday preoccupations cut across the shadowy lines of borders, and nationalities. Cyber wars exist to lay claim to the authenticity of biryani and its local variants, the “real” kebabs, and its imitations around.
Through this paper I seek to explore the intertwined and contested notions of “authenticity” and “heritage” in the face of certain food items that proliferate the lives of the Indian and Pakistani citizens alike, and how these food wars have also given birth to the idea of GI (geographical indication) Tags, which again remain highly contestable. By taking into account particular instances from the food history of India and Pakistan, my paper seeks to navigate through the contested terrains of authenticity that continues to remain couched in a particular geographical area.
Speaker Bio
Sonakshi Srivastava graduated from the University of Delhi in 2020, and is now an MPhil scholar at Indraprastha University, Delhi, where she researches on the aesthetics of emotions and the long 18th Century. Currently, she is the Oceanvale Scholar for the Spring-Autumn session at Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi, where she is researching on the aesthetics of emotions in Kobo Abe’s novels. Her works have previously published in the eSharp Journal, and as chapters in two edited volumes, and a recent piece for the TMR. Her areas of interests include aesthetics and critical theory, memory and trauma studies, animal studies and ethics, food studies, and Indian Writing in English, among others.
Lede E Miki Pohshna, North Eastern Hill University - The Quest for Egalitarianism: Materiality, Embodiment and sharing of Kwai in Khasi community.
Kwai, which is a Khasi recreational snack made up of a mixture of areca nuts, betel leaves, tobacco and lime, is used in all Khasi household as food offering to the guests regardless of their status. The origin of this snack can be traced back to a particular legend of U Kwai, Tympew, Shun bad Duma Sla. This legends stresses on the need for a food that can be shared by everyone across the social strata which can also be received as such by all strata. This paper will examine the issues of egalitarianism in the tribal society of the Khasis and argue that Kwai serves as an important signifier of equality. Moreover, the paper will examine the embodiment of social strata in the food and how all these strata are being united when consumed. As such, this paper will examine the idea of equality among the Khasi community and how food plays a very important role in deconstructing inequalities in societal hierarchies.
Speaker Bio
Lede E Miki Pohshna is a PhD research scholar in the department of English, North Eastern Hill University. His research interest is on Queer writings in general and South Asian Queer Fiction in particular. He enjoys writings that try to understand the human predicament and its darker side. He writes poems, short stories and attempts to complete a novel. Currently he divides his time between Shillong and Sohkha Mission, his native village.
Simran Dhingra, Jamia Millia Islamia - “To Eat or Not to Eat?” India’s beef conundrum and the politics of food
Food continues to be a matter of contestation in India, the growing waves of nationalism and hostility towards ‘others’ has caused a heightened surveillance of what’s on one’s plate. Cow, perceived as a sacred animal, is revered in religious philosophies of Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism, thus their slaughter is frowned upon. It appears paradoxical for a country that ranks a dismal 94 on World Hunger Index (2020), placed in the “serious hunger” category to deliberate over what citizens eat rather than focusing on tackling hunger/poverty. The growing resentment and curbing of freedom can be traced back to the rise of the Bharata Janata Party, that swept landslide victory and came to power in 2014. Their beliefs in Hindu religious superiority and their unofficial manifesto of promoting Hindu ideologies and practices, terming any opposition or resistance as ‘anti national’ have been detrimental to India’s progress and commitment to democratic, secular principals.
Currently, the atmosphere in India for the Muslim communities has been that of abject horror, anxiety and distress. Since 2015 there have been hundreds of inhumane mob lynchings where Muslims have been brutally tortured and murdered at the slightest suspicions of storing/cooking beef inside their homes; most of these accusations turned out to be false rumors but the victims’ families never got justice. New laws against cow slaughter are being implemented and beef bans widely cropping up, ‘cow vigilant groups’ are being formed, the unemployed youth being brainwashed into taking up violence for protecting Hindutva ideology. The paper will discuss these aspects of political contestation of food and the ideological force driving these hostile sentiments.
Speaker Bio
Simran Dhingra is pursuing a Master’s in Conflict Analysis and Peace Building from Jamia Millia Islamia, India. She has completed her undergraduate studies from the University of Delhi, in BA Honours Humanities and Social Sciences; with a major in English Literature and minor in Journalism. She is currently working as a Communications Intern at United Nations Global Compact Network, India. An avid reader, she constantly seeks to understand the world around her and challenge the preexisting knowledge, beliefs concerning prominent socio-cultural issues in society. As a budding researcher her main areas of interest are Women’s writing, Postcolonial literature, Realism and Ecocriticism.
Carolina Gallarini, UEA - Edible and Folded Identity: Food and its Visual Aspect as Cultural Heritage in Kanaky/New Caledonia.
Since the early 1980s, Kanak people have highlighted their identity to represent themselves in the Melanesian context. This political work on the self-representation of Kanaky/New Caledonia was initiated by local politics, determined to gain independence from French colonialism peacefully. Nowadays, Kanak are still struggling to gain sovereignty in their country, using identity symbols to show their history and connection with the land.
One of the most studied identity markers in anthropology is food, which is conceptualized as part of the cultural heritage by societies and individuals. Food and its rules or rituals of preparation create categorizations that connect to social identity.
Historical recipes are a cultural symbol in Kanaky/New Caledonia as well, where it is possible to notice a strong correlation with their colonial history and food production. Moreover, the main ingredients of Kanak recipes represent their cosmology, also highlighted by the respect and time dedicated to the preparation of the dishes. The typical dish, called bougna, is prepared with taro, yam, sweet potato, banana, and a source of proteins. Women usually cook this dish for the feasts, folding the banana leaves that contain the final plate.
This intervention will introduce the Kanak history through food production to better understand its link with cultural memory and identity. In addition, some photos collected in a digital ethnographic will be shown to explain the preparation and aesthetics of these dishes.
Hélène Binesse, UEA - Exploring the invisible power relations ‘steaming’ from the pot of ceebu jën in Senegal
To undertake my doctoral study in adult literacy and learning, I volunteered in an education Non-Governmental Organisation in Malika, a town in the suburbs of Dakar in Senegal and lived in the home of a Senegalese family.
During my fieldwork, eating was a daily social activity as I never had lunch or dinner on my own. At the NGO, the food was delivered in a large common pot; everyday sitting on the mat we were all looking at the pot to discover what was the dish of the day. Rice was not a surprise, but the sauce, the fish and the vegetable made the difference and gave a sense of variety to the national dish ceebu jën, rice and fish. It was always a festival of colours and savours and not only at the NGO.
Drawing on a ten-month ethnographic study in Malika, I will describe the mundane everyday food practices, from buying the supplies, to cooking and eating together that I observed and engaged in. Through this presentation, I will explore the local practices and beliefs around cooking and eating, how some are transmitted through generations, others intensified by the food industry. I look in particular at how some roles like nourishing and serving food, in most cases performed by women, are reflecting identities around care and how food advertisements use the image of the ‘good’ housewife.
Speaker Bio
Hélène Binesse is a PhD Researcher in education and development at UEA. Drawing on a 10-month ethnographic study, she is exploring communicative practices around health and nutrition in Malika, a town in the suburbs of Dakar in Senegal. She is particularly interested in the informal learning processes taking place in this community, the mediation of resources by trusted members and how adults engage with this information. She holds a Master degree in teaching French as a foreign language and worked for 10 years on educational matters in Eritrea, Yemen, South Africa, Uganda, Afghanistan and UNESCO Paris.
Weibe Copman, Columbia University - Aesthetics of food in Instagram Stories and the authenticity of the everyday
This paper will focus on the aesthetical strategies employed to heighten the authenticity of the everyday. I want to draw parallels between Instagram and the diary film; I am struck by the diaristic tone of social media posts in general and Instagram “stories” in specific. These stories allow users to intensify the audiovisual communication of the “here and now” of their everyday realities; the premise of Instagram’s instantaneity culminates in the extensive use of these stories, all of which remain visible for only twenty-four hours. Phones have become instruments of audiovisual diaristic documentation and Instagram the main platform of their exhibition. Posting videos as temporally finite Instagram stories, with no editing involved, users create a “lyrical reality” of their mundane lives—which, during the pandemic, users documented extensively, often focusing on their culinary experiments in the kitchen. Our approach to Instagram resembles the practices of the diary filmmaker: mere diaristic documentation becomes an investigation into everyday experiences, and by fixing our gaze on details of our mundane reality, Instagram summons us to consider these moments as auratic.
To illustrate my point, I will concentrate mainly on two case-studies, drawing attention to their unexpected similarities; American filmmaker Holly Fisher’s Chickenstew (1978), a structural take on the diary film, and British chef Anna Jones’ Instagram TV-videos, shot in one single take in her parents’ garden shed during the first COVID-lockdown.
Speaker Bio
My background is in art studies and literature, but I also very recently graduated from Columbia University’s master’s program in Film and Media Studies with a thesis on food media. For the colloquium, I want to propose a revised version of my thesis, incorporating work I have done on avant-garde essayistic traditions.
I wrote my thesis on food as a performative vehicle used to construct an (auto)biography of auratic experiences of the everyday. Inspired by Benjamin, I first considered food (as it is defined to a particular “here and now”) to contain an authentic aura on its own, as if it were a work of art; second, I argued that food media, in its representation of food, create a wholly new, auratic experience—that is, the medium in itself becomes an object of aura.
Dr Betsy Moss - Abundance and Poverty: Aesthetics of Food Insecurity in Canadian Art
In Canada, the number of people experiencing food insecurity increased from 12.5% in 2018 to 14.6%, or 4.5 million people, as of May 2020. The economic effects of the global pandemic caused this increase and exacerbated the existing imbalance in social supports and policies in which at least one in eight Canadian households experienced food insecurity before the pandemic. We know that food insecurity is caused by poverty, and that the experience of food scarcity is closely linked to systems of food distribution and access.
How do artists working in Canada represent food insecurity? What are the visual qualities, symbols, and conceptual frameworks of artworks designed to inspire and ignite community and government action to solve this problem? I argue that the way food is depicted in recent Canadian art devoted to this social justice issue emphasizes the abundant and life-giving qualities of food at the expense of addressing the policies and systemic issues that cause people in Canada to experience food insecurity.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Betsy Moss is an instructor of art history and the theory of art in Toronto, Canada, where she completed her PhD at the University of Toronto in 2016. Her dissertation research focused on the adornment of Byzantine icons from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The newly developed decorative vocabulary situated devotional images within a spatial and temporal frame that incorporated depictions the entire cycle of Orthodox liturgical seasons.
This research on the aesthetics of food insecurity in Canadian art marks a turn in her research in which she combines her passion for spiritually and socially engaged art with her commitment to increasing food security in her local neighborhood. As a volunteer with the Avenue Road Food Bank, she regularly interacts with other volunteers and clients who are hungry for beauty and a sense of connection with the world around them. In addition to teaching, she also produces a podcast on teaching Buddhist Studies in Higher Education and is raising three amazing kids.