Introduction: decolonizing French food

Abstract

What are the conceptual, cultural, and economic stakes involved in thinking literature and foodways as intertwined? Theorizing food in this way fosters an interdisciplinary, intersectional approach that pays careful attention to the cultural and material pathways through which food is produced, consumed, symbolized, and invested with meaning. Scrutinizing the ideological and material underpinnings of culinary practices allows us to better appreciate food’s figurative richness and contribution to the making, unmaking, and remaking of French culture and socio-political relations. The introduction to this Special Issue reviews recent efforts in the field of Food Studies to advance such an analysis and situates the primary lines of inquiry taken up in this volume in relation to the critical frameworks that inform them. What the articles gathered here demonstrate is that acts of eating, as well as the depiction of food in art and history, both shape and are shaped by racialized and gendered power dynamics, affective investments and attachments, and economic inequities. Xenophilia and xenophobia, exoticism and repulsion are intimately connected; both modalities abstract and flatten the foodstuffs and creative capacities of the non-European. A key question that emerges in this issue is, then: How might we build better modes of conviviality, of eating together and living together well?.