GASTROPOETICS
Gastropoetics: Eating as Dissidence in Modern Cuba and Brazil explores how scenes of eating articulate dissident forms of expression and belonging in modern Latin American literature and art. The book draws from the fields of Political Theory, Food Studies, and Continental Philosophy to show that through imaginative uses of food Latin American intellectuals sidestep the isolationist and identitarian rhetorics of nationalism. Examining works by writers and artists such as Oswald de Andrade, José Lezama Lima, Rubem Fonseca, and Vik Muniz, I argue that food imagery resists official narratives of autonomy, progress, and social harmony, thus opening conscientious ways of rethinking the nation. I look at stories, manifestos, creative essays, and visual art from the 1920s to the present, and ask how this engagement in turn contests Latin America’s place in global literary and cultural systems. The book makes three principal contributions to scholarship: (1) I show how Latin American authors respond to the persistent hierarchies within and across nations through the use of alimentary imagery; (2) I establish a dialogue between the cultural output of Cuba and Brazil by focusing on shared histories of sugar production, national cuisines that feature African and indigenous elements, and theories of cultural influence; and (3) I demonstrate how images of consumption ultimately function as self-referential tropes, positing the shifting place of literature and art in our modern world order.