Acquired Tastes: Food as Relation in Franco-African Cultures and Women’s Literature

Abstract

My dissertation investigates the parallels between food and literary productions that are particularly dominant in the role that France has played in the construction of both sub-Saharan and Caribbean culinary and literary art when it comes to recognition and prestige. It expands the study of francophone literature towards the material culture of food, as I posit that the birth of a literature concerned with gastronomical matters lessens the scarcity of African cookbooks, especially those destined for an African audience, and transforms literary writing into a pragmatic way of reclaiming oral cultures and experiences previously appropriated by France. Subsequently, it enables me to rethink and challenge the excluding dichotomy between high versus low cuisines and literary cultures as I document the current rise of sub-Saharan African cuisines from marginalization to an established cultural presence in the West outside of an all-encompassing ethnic niche. Finally, I demonstrate that the literary hybridity of gastro-literature echoes a culinary hybridization inherited from transnational and transdurational rhizomic connections inherited from global movements that redefine the notions of terroir and locavorism. Ultimately, I argue that gastro-literature participates in a greater movement of resistance and advocacy for social justice through the recognition and (re)definition of both culinary and literary sub-Saharan and Caribbean traditions free from the long-lasting influence of France.