An original and eclectic view of cookbooks as political acts
Cookbooks are not political in conventional ways. They neither
proclaim, as do manifestos, nor do they forbid, as do laws. They do
not command agreement, as do arguments, and their stipulations
often lack specificity - cook "until browned." Yet, as repositories
of human taste, cookbooks transmit specific blends of flavor,
texture, and nutrition across space and time. Cookbooks both form
and reflect who we are. In Cookbook Politics, Kennan Ferguson
explores the sensual and political implications of these
repositories, demonstrating how they create nations, establish
ideologies, shape international relations, and structure
communities. Cookbook Politics argues that cookbooks highlight
aspects of our lives we rarely recognize as political-taste,
production, domesticity, collectivity, and imagination-and
considers the ways in which cookbooks have or do politics, from the
most overt to the most subtle. Cookbooks turn regional diversity
into national unity, as Pellegrino Artusi's Science in the Kitchen
and the Art of Eating Well did for Italy in 1891. Politically
affiliated organizations compile and sell cookbooks-for example,
the early United Nations published The World's Favorite Recipes.
From the First Baptist Church of Midland, Tennessee's community
cookbook, to Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, to
the Italian Futurists' proto-fascist guide to food preparation,
Ferguson demonstrates how cookbooks mark desires and reveal social
commitments: your table becomes a representation of who you are.
Authoritative, yet flexible; collective, yet individualized;
cooperative, yet personal-cookbooks invite participation, editing,
and transformation. Created to convey flavor and taste across
generations, communities, and nations, they enact the continuities
and changes of social lives. Their functioning in the name of
creativity and preparation-with readers happily consuming them in
similar ways-makes cookbooks an exemplary model for democratic
politics.
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