Glocal and food: On alimentary translation

Abstract

The essay investigates the relation between glocal and food. As it engages the task, it touches upon three principal domains: (I) the first is the intimate and constitutive relation between the idea of farming and the rise of the term glocal; (II) the second, and more substantial domain concerns the exploration of the device of appropriation within the European semiosphere of the foods originating in the Americas - such as the tomato, the potato, Turkey, chocolate, coffee; (III) the third domain engages the semiopolitical tensions centering around the symbolic dish of Sardinian cuisine, su porceddu (suckling pig), before and within the European context. More broadly, the essay draws a comparison between the unperceived glocality of past food exchanges and hybridizations with aspects of alimentary contemporaneity. By means of this comparison the essay will show how today's explicit recognition of gastronomical-cultural diversity produces paradoxical effects of limitation of alimentary translatability. At the same time, the comparison underlines how and why contemporary food consumption can be described as a glocal production of the authentic.