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.
