Phenomenology of a Symbolic Dish: What Su Porceddu Teaches Us About Food, Meaning, and Identification

Abstract

How can we analyse a symbolic dish? Which kind of semio-political questions should we consider in such an analysis? Which cultural categories might be useful to study these socio-historical processes and the related forms of life? To answer these questions, we will deal with a specific case study: su porceddu, the roasted suckling pig that represents Sardinia’s contemporary symbolic dish. At one level, the analysis allows recognising some relevant issues for Sardinian culture in the broader context of Mediterranean history: first, the dishes’ fraught and varied meanings reflect Sardinian traditional, local, regional, or national identities throughout time. At another level, the general categories of continuity/discontinuity, one’s own/someone else’s, knowledge/flavour, and memory/forgetfulness assist in analysing the meaning of food. This relationalist approach highlights the notion of (un)translatability as a key cultural and alimentary process, also allowing us to look at food consumption and description as embodied forms of and powerful tools for self-consciousness.