Visual consumption : an exploration of narrative and nostalgia in contemporary South African cookbooks

Abstract

This study explores the visual consumption of food and its meanings through the study of narrative and nostalgia in a selection of five South African cookbooks. The aim of this study is to suggest, through the exploration of various cookbook narratives and the role that nostalgia plays in individual and collective identity formation and maintenance, that food, as symbolic goods, can act as a unifying ideology in the construction of a sense of national identity and nationhood. This is made relevant in a South African context through the analysis of a cross-section of five recent South African cookbooks. These are Shiny happy people (2009) by Neil Roake; Waar vye nog soet is (2009) by Emilia Le Roux and Francois Smuts; Evita’s kossie sikelela (2010) by Evita Bezuidenhout (Pieter-Dirk Uys); Tortoises & tumbleweeds (journey through an African kitchen) (2008) by Lannice Snyman; and South Africa eats (2009) by Phillippa Cheifitz. In order to gain an understanding of cookbooks’ significance in modern culture, it is necessary to understand that cookbooks – as postmodern texts – carry meaning and cultural significance. Through the exploration of cookbooks, as material objects of culture, one is also able to explore non-material items of culture such as the society’s knowledge, beliefs and values. Other key concepts to this study include the global growth of interest in food; the shift from the physical consumption of food to the visual consumption thereof; the roles that consumption, narrative and nostalgia play in constructing and maintaining personal and collective identities; and the role of food as a unifying ideology in the construction of a sense of nationhood.