tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922639800925489148.post1040001990655239549..comments2022-10-17T07:51:34.923+13:00Comments on Nae Hauf-Way Hoose: The Jargon of AuthenticityDougalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16935605945901196637noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922639800925489148.post-24671235043129027492011-06-08T11:29:29.351+12:002011-06-08T11:29:29.351+12:00whatever the points in favour of the period instru...<i>whatever the points in favour of the period instrument people, one end result of their argument is that I’d need to throw away my recordings of Glenn Gould playing Bach. That’s a loss all of its own.</i><br /><br />Only so long as you take their argument to be that period music must to be played with period instruments. Which is seldom if ever the case. In fact, I would say that most period instruments people don't have an argument, just a practice. <br /><br />So too seeking to reproduce foods as they were once made doesn't require erasing the memory of the drudgery that certain preparations involved - on the contrary, it can in fact recover it. <br /><br /><i>The two mix in sometimes uncomfortable ways, though, in school settings: a friend showed me once a notice their child got at their local school asking them to bring a dish ‘from their culture.’ The intent behind the gesture was, I imagine, wholly welcoming; the effect, though, was to demand a fixing of roles which weren’t really able to be fixed.</i><br /><br />Yes, our school sends out those on cultural days. And yes, they can be uncomfortable, but then the discourse around multiculturalism is not meant to be comfortable. And it’s a great teachable moment if you think about it. It forces you – most especially if you happen to be a Pakeha – to ask the kind of questions that are elided by the use of words like ‘ethnic’ to describe restaurants. (Pakeha culture is not the default culture, the un-ethnic, a culture without content that can subsume all others.)Giovanni Tisohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10618534731338616708noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922639800925489148.post-47333180537754865882011-06-08T11:12:34.636+12:002011-06-08T11:12:34.636+12:00On keeping food traditions: yes, there’s a complic...On keeping food traditions: yes, there’s a complicated history around particular foods and food struggles, and it’s to recognise that, so thanks again for the comment. I don’t know the Italian history in enough detail to comment, but would add as an aside that these items from the archive need treated in the same Benjaminian way here as any other: they’re documents of barbarism and civilization. So many ancient traditions are worthy and important in ways you mention (and that I don’t dispute), but they’re also records of the persistence of the unpaid drudgery and chores that’ve filled women’s lives.<br /><br />Kimchi is the example I know of here: there’s lots of panic in Korea that people don’t make kimchi themselves anymore. I don’t want to mock that panic: it’s a very old skill that is getting lost, and the move to supermarket buying represents a further commodification of private life, the loss of an old social space, and so on. I recognise the problem there but….I buy my own kimchi! Making it is time-consuming, back-breaking grind, & your fingers get stained and end up stinking for weeks. Too often the call for authenticity calls on someone else to maintain that hallowed tradition.<br /><br />The music example is a good one: whatever the points in favour of the period instrument people, one end result of their argument is that I’d need to throw away my recordings of Glenn Gould playing Bach. That’s a loss all of its own.Dougalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16935605945901196637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922639800925489148.post-73033881143354745222011-06-08T11:12:12.922+12:002011-06-08T11:12:12.922+12:00Many thanks for the comment Giovanni; lots of food...Many thanks for the comment Giovanni; lots of food for thought (one of had to). What you write here is an important corrective point, too: I was stressing one side of an argument because I think that, in its current political form, ‘authenticity’ carries with it the dangers I mention, but in the process I’m aware I was also being one-sided.<br />The point about multicultural festivals is particularly important here; I suppose I’d want to make a distinction between a multicultural reality and multiculturalism, a political strategy I’m not in sympathy with. It’s a reality – and a good one – that we live in a multicultural area: the kind of ‘hailing’ as an Italian you mention is carried out more or less ‘from below’, yes?, a sort of bottom-up multiculturalism, where food serves an important communicative role making sociability possible where language might not function so smoothly. That’s a different matter from a multiculturalism from above, though, such as the kind in Melbourne where the City Council are able to adjudicate and issue rules on how Chineseness is to be displayed in Chinatown.<br /><br />The two mix in sometimes uncomfortable ways, though, in school settings: a friend showed me once a notice their child got at their local school asking them to bring a dish ‘from their culture.’ The intent behind the gesture was, I imagine, wholly welcoming; the effect, though, was to demand a fixing of roles which weren’t really able to be fixed.Dougalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16935605945901196637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922639800925489148.post-63305028703657414832011-06-08T10:05:38.611+12:002011-06-08T10:05:38.611+12:00What a great post. And so much to comment on, I...What a great post. And so much to comment on, I'll just pick a couple of things from the top of the pile. Firstly, and I'm not saying that you suggest otherwise other perhaps than in the last sentence, I would argue that there is in fact a place for authenticity in our discourse on food. An important place, even. The slow food movement - which may be perceived in Britain as a bourgeois trapping - came out of the Italian Left, and the search for authenticity and defence of endengered cultural practices is a significant component of it. I think it's important work for a number of reasons, some of which I have written about in the food posts at my place. But briefly, here's one that may be relevant: it's not just that dishes crystallised in time, made the way, say, one's grandmother did (in my case), are signifiers that can be expected to communicate without mediation to members of other cultures by virtue of their authenticity. But rather that they form part of a familial and cultural archive. To attempt to reproduce them in a faithful manner is no different than playing ancient folk music with original instruments, or do Shakespeare in the manner of the Elizabethans - all gestures that may appear arbitrary, and are open to critique, but arguably do have value. <br /><br />As do multicultural festivals, incidentally. Whenever I am called upon (typically by my local school) to cook something at an event, I know it's expected of me that it will be Italian, just as I would expect members of our Somali community to prepare their foods, and not a curry, even though who knows, they may prefer curries and cook them more often in their homes. And we respond to that expectation on the whole rather cheerfully, not because we've interiorised the colonial reflex, but because we're a little bit proud, and we know that food *is* a form of communication. I couldn't speak Italian to my neighbours and hope that they understand it, but I can cook them Italian food and expect them to like it. And I need to do those things, I'm glad to do them, because they still speak of who I am.<br /><br />So I would say that no, we're not all interlopers, at least not all the time, and the word interloper, just like the word authentic, does a lot of its own erasing. <br /><br />For the flipside of authenticity in the restaurant business is blithe, maybe even ironic appropriation, isn't it? I could write a book-length essay on what is wrong with the Parmesan made by Kapiti Cheeses, or the way some Italian dishes are reinvented in New Zealand restaurants, and it would highlight I expect how the post-cultural, and not just the multi-cultural, has lots to answer for.Giovanni Tisohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10618534731338616708noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922639800925489148.post-32805148403489369932011-06-07T12:41:55.911+12:002011-06-07T12:41:55.911+12:00Thanks for the comment, Keith; I'm really glad...Thanks for the comment, Keith; I'm really glad you finding my writing useful. Couldn't agree more on the point about food as a way in to these other debates.Dougalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16935605945901196637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922639800925489148.post-29540515050507174942011-05-27T19:51:02.772+12:002011-05-27T19:51:02.772+12:00Great read Dougal. In my years in restaurants I sa...Great read Dougal. In my years in restaurants I saw first hand the dubious quest for authenticity on the part of chefs and owners seeking a commercial point of difference or a one up on a competitor. A lot of post colonial patronising went on. Food is a very revealing window of race and politics in society. Great to see some focus on it. KeithKeith McNeillnoreply@blogger.com