Return to search

Texts and Tastes: Food and Cultural Identity in Hispanic Writing and Film

This dissertation explores the role of food representation and identity in Hispanic cultural production as they participate in establishing resistant agency despite historical contexts
of authoritarian oppression. Accordingly, I explore subjectivity through the lens of food studies as it is grounded in notions of difference and therefore allows us to establish
understandings of self and other - both personal and political. Next, I use this relationship between food and subjective experience to demonstrate how - regardless of the details in which it
is manifested - in each of the historical contexts, the end result of food representation is a politics of resistance which in some fashion challenges the authoritarian status-quo. This is a
process that occurs within the text, among characters and often manifested through a challenging of gender roles. However, these works (and specifically their varied historical trajectories)
also demonstrate that the language of food extends far beyond the text, participating in larger projects that challenge, undermine, and rewrite the ethical atrocities committed during each of
these oppressive political regimes. The novels and films included in this study were chosen to purposely span various geographical and historical time periods encompassing dictatorship,
political transition, and those produced in democratic retrospect, which thus revisit an oppressive past in the Hispanic world. In chapter one, I explore food representation as it
problematizes Puerto Rican identity in the face of United States imperialism in Luis Rafael Sánchez's Puerto Rican novel La Guaracha del Macho Camacho (1976). In chapter two, I analyze
gastropoetics in Margarita Engle's US-Cuban novel Singing to Cuba (1993), as it establishes interconnectedness among the characters, which is juxtaposed with the ruptures created by Castro's
communism. In chapter three, I investigate how culinary metaphor is used to rewrite Spain's history of Francoist oppression in Almudena Grandes' Spanish novel Inés y la alegría (2010).
Finally, this study concludes with an analysis of food representation in two films that depict the transition from authoritarianism to democracy: Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón's La mitad del cielo
(1986), a Spanish transitional piece, and Silvio Caiozzi's transitional film La luna en el espejo (1990), produced under Chilean dictatorship. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2014. / October 24, 2014. / Authoritarian Literature, Cultural Studies, Food Studies, Hispanic Literature, Transatlantic Literature, US-Latino Literature / Includes bibliographical references. / Enrique Álvarez, Professor Directing Dissertation; Bruce Boehrer, University Representative; Roberto Fernández, Committee Member; Lisa Wakamiya, Committee
Member; Michael Uzendoski, Committee Member.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_252840
ContributorsHuard, Elizabeth L. (Elizabeth Louise) (authoraut), Álvarez, Enrique, 1959- (professor directing dissertation), Boehrer, Bruce Thomas (university representative), Fernández, Roberto G. (committee member), Wakamiya, Lisa Ryoko, 1969- (committee member), Uzendoski, Michael, 1968- (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Arts and Sciences (degree granting college), Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (degree granting department)
PublisherFlorida State University, Florida State University
Source SetsFlorida State University
LanguageEnglish, English
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeText, text
Format1 online resource (166 pages), computer, application/pdf
RightsThis Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them.

Page generated in 0.0023 seconds