Control and Resistance reveals the various ways in which food writing of the early Franco era was a potent political tool, producing ways of eating and thinking about food that privileged patriotism over personal desire. The author examines a diverse range of official and non-official food texts to highlight how discourse helped construct and contest identities in line with the three ideological pillars of the regime: autarky, prescriptive gender roles, and monolithic nationalism. Official food discourse produced an audience with a taste for local foodstuffs, and also created a unified gastronomic space in which regional cuisines were co-opted for the purposes of culinary nationalism.
The author discusses a genre of official texts directed solely at women, which demanded women's compliance and exclusive dedication to domesticity. Alongside such examples, Control and Resistance includes texts that offered resistance to the Franco hegemony. Food texts have traditionally been viewed as apolitical because of their connections with domesticity, so they were not subject to the same degree of censorship as other published works. Accordingly, food writing was at times more capable of offering disruptive or resistant textual spaces than other forms of discourse.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Food Discourse and Francoist Spain: The State of the Scholarship
Franco and Fascism
Francoist Discourse and Control
Francoist Biopolitics and Food
Food Discourse and Resistance
Censorship in Franco’s Spain: Resistance, Oversight, and Food Texts
Overview of This Book: Autarky, Gender, and Centralist Nationalism
1. Food Discourse and the Production of Autarkic Subjectivities
Eat More Oranges
A Taste for Rice
An Appetite for Culinary Patriotism
Food Shortages and Culinary Abundance
No Place at the Table for Hunger
Pro-official Cookbooks in Times of Hunger
Providing an Account of Hunger in Cookbooks
Francoist Food Discourse: Autarky, Hunger, and Culinary Patriotism
2. Beyond the Kitchen: Food Texts, Gender, and Compliance in Franco Spain
Writing Women Back Into the Kitchen
Constructing Subservient Subjectivities through Cookbooks
Cookery Instruction and the Authority of the Sección Femenina
The Authority of Modernity
Ana María Herrera and Manual de cocina: The Invisible Author
Sección Femenina Cookery Manuals and the Professional Domestic
The Gendering of Gastronomy: Sección Femenina and La Marquesa de Parabere
Breaking the Mould: Non-official Cookbooks
Mi recetario de cocina: Sarrau’s Authorial Persona Emerges
La futura ama de casa: Constructing a Modern Spanish Womanhood
A Broader Narrative of Franco-Era Cookbooks: Obedience and Resistance
3. A Recipe for Spain: The Production of a Unified Gastronomic
Space and the Gendering of Gastronomy
Establishing the Borders of Spanish Food Culture
The Gendering of Gastronomy and Food Discourse
The Production of a Unified Gastronomic Space
The Male Gastronome and National Unity: Erasing Regional Difference
Guía gastronómica de España: The Eradication of Regional Diversity and the Exclusion of Women
Cookbooks and Regional Ingredients in the National Recipe
Isabel de Trévis and the Authority of Male Gastronomes
Doménech’s Food Discourse and Nationalism
Regional Cuisines: Minimized and Co-opted
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Index
About the Author :
Lara Anderson is convenor of the Spanish & Latin American Studies program at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Review :
" Control and Resistance closes a huge gap in our understanding of Francoism and brings a wealth of previously unexplored primary sources and a rich repertoire of new theoretical tools into the field of study of Spanish Cultural Studies. It also ties together the issues of patriarchy, social control, domesticity, textuality, and nation-building, all through the exciting and under-researched set of sources."
--Eugenia Afinoguénova, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Marquette University
" Control and Resistance is an important work in the study of modern Spain's 'foodways' (food in relation to culture and gastronomy) and its intersection with the country's history, politics and culture. The research is solid, and the texts examined will inspire further research."
--H. Rosi Song, Department of Hispanic Studies, University of Durham
