Queering Striated Food Politics: Tropical Postg(l)ocal Precarity in Romesh Gunesekera’s Reef

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.23.2.2024.4027

Keywords:

Queering, Straited Food Politics, Post(g)local Precarity, Smooth Politics, War Machine, Tropicality, Tropical Post(g)local Precarity, Romesh Gunesekera

Abstract

The inoperativity of striated narratives of food politics stands caught up by patriarchal practices of identity formation entailing codification of different sexualities in terms of ‘rigid’ territories and strata and therefore cannot but conform to the irresistible snares of tropical postg(l)ocal precarity embodied by the disseminating strands of neoliberal capitalism. It thus calls for the actualization of queering to decimate ‘rigid segmentarities’ of striated food politics, which seeks to work in tandem with the territorializing movements of tropical postg(l)ocal precarity backed by the structures of patriarchal normativity. Queering striated food politics in the context of Sri Lanka strikes up an epistemic departure from the practices of culinary stratification of sexualities and eventually takes up rhizomatic movements both to call the nuanced liaisons between striated food politics and tropical postg(l)ocal precarity into question and suggest a ‘smooth politics’ in the form of a nomadic ‘war machine’. Queering striated food politics thus entails a strong resistance against the patriarchal culinary incarcerations of sexualities, taking substantial recourse to Romesh Gunesekera’s novel Reef. 

Author Biography

Abhisek Ghosal, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India

Abhisek Ghosal PhD currently works at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India. His areas of research interest include Deleuze and Guattari Studies, Blue Humanities, South Asian Literature, Critical Theory and Indic Studies, among others. He has previously published in eTropic and has written for the New Global Studies and symploke. He has published a monograph Plasti(e)cological Thinking: Working out an (Infra)structural Geoerotics. He has recently contributed an article to the edited volume titled The Monarch and Nonhuman in Literature and Cinema: Western and Global Perspectives published by Routledge in 2024. His latest monograph on Blue Humanities was published by Routledge in 2024.  

References

Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Oxford University Press.

Barthes, R. (2013). Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption. In C. Counihan & P. van Esterik (Eds.), Food and Culture: A Reader (pp.23-30). Routledge. (Original work published 1961). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315680347-2

Benitez, C J R. & Lundberg, A. (2022). Tropical Materialisms: Toward Decolonial Poetics, Practices and Possibilities. eTropic, 21(2), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.2.2022.3929

Butler, J. (2009). Performativity, Precarity and Sexual Politics. AIBR. Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana, 4(3), i-xiii. https://genderandsecurity.org/sites/default/files/Butler_-_Performativity_Precarity_Sexual_Pol.pdf.

Cesaire, A. (1972). Discourse on Colonialism. Monthly Review Press.

Colebrook, C. (2009). On the Very Possibility of Queer Theory. In C. Nigianni & M. Storr (Eds.), Deleuze and Queer Theory (pp.11-23). Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748634040.003.0001

Conley, V A. (2009). Thirty-six Thousand Forms of Love: The Queering of Deleuze and Guattari. In C. Nigianni & M. Storr (Eds.), Deleuze and Queer Theory (pp.24-36). Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748634040.003.0002

Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and Repetition (Paul Patton, Trans.). Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1968)

Deleuze, G. (1993). The Fold: Leibniz and Baroque (Tom Conley, Trans.). The Athlone Press.

Deleuze, G. (1995). Negotiations (Martin Joughin, Trans.). Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1990)

Deleuze, G. (1990). The Logic of Sense (Mark Lester, Trans.). The Athlone Press. (Original work published 1969)

Deleuze, G, & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.

Deleuze, G, & Parnet, C. (2007). Dialogues II (Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, Trans.). Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1977)

Gunesekera, R. (1994). Reef. Granta.

Hickey-Moody, A., & Rasmussen, M.L. (2009). The Sexed Subject in-between Deleuze and Butler. In C. Nigianni & M. Storr (Eds.), Deleuze and Queer Theory (pp.37-53). Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748634040.003.0003

Lévi-Strauss, C. (2013). The Culinary Triangle. In C. Counihan & P. v. Esterik (Eds.), Food and Culture: A Reader (pp.40-47). Routledge (Original work published 1961)

Lundberg, A., Regis, H., & Agbonifo, J. (2022). Tropical Landscapes and Nature-Culture Entaglements: Reading Tropicality via Avatar. eTropic, 21(1), 1-27. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3877

MacCormack, P. (2009). Unnatural Alliances. In C. Nigianni & M. Storr (Eds.), Deleuze and Queer Theory (pp.134-149). Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748634040.003.0008

Mannur, A. (2010). Culinary Fictions: Food in South Asian Diasporic Cultures. Temple University Press.

Morland, I., & Willox, A. (2005). Introduction. In I. Morland and A. Willox (Eds.), Queer Theory (pp.1-5). Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-21162-9_1

O'Sullivan, S., & Zepke, S. (2008). Introduction: The Production of the New. In S. Sullivan & S. Zepke (Eds.), Deleuze, Guattari and the Production of the New (pp. 1-10). Continuum. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781472546333.ch-001

Parisi, L. (2009). The Adventures of a Sex. In C. Nigianni & M. Storr (Eds.), Deleuze and Queer Theory (pp. 72-91). Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748634040.003.0005

Probyn, E. (2000). Carnal Appetites: FoodSexIdentities. Routledge.

Puar, J. K. (2005). Queer Times, Queer Assemblages. Social Text, 23(3-4), 121-139. Queer Assemblages.pdf

Ray, K., & Srinivas, T. Introduction. In K. Ray & T. Srinivas (Eds.), Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food and South Asia (pp.3-28). University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520952249-001

Riley, K. C., & Paugh, A. L. (2019). Food and Language: Discourses and Foodways across Cultures. Routledge.

Ruffolo, D. (2009). Post-Queer Politics. Ashgate. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315601724

Smith, D. W. (2008). Deleuze and the Production of the New. In S. Sullivan & S. Zepke (Eds.), Deleuze, Guattari and the Production of the New (pp. 151-161). Continuum. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781472546333.ch-014

Spargo, T. (2000). Foucault and Queer Theory. Icon Books.

Stockton, W. (2023). An Introduction to Queer Literary Studies: Reading Queerly. Routledge.

Vester, K. (2020). Queering Cookbook. In J. M. Coghlan (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Food (pp.131-145). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316997796.011

Whittle, S. (2005). Gender Fucking or Fucking Gender. In I. Morland & A. Willox (Eds.), Queer Theory (pp.115-129). Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-21162-9_10

Downloads

Published

2024-10-15

How to Cite

Ghosal, A. (2024). Queering Striated Food Politics: Tropical Postg(l)ocal Precarity in Romesh Gunesekera’s Reef. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 23(2), 286–303. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.23.2.2024.4027

Issue

Vol. 23 No. 2 (2024): Queering the Tropics, Part 2. Queering Tropically: Sexuality, Indigeneity, Decoloniality, Spatiality

Section

Essays and Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2024 CC-BY

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who submit articles to this journal agree to the following terms:

1. Authors are responsible for ensuring that any material that has influenced the research or writing has been properly cited and credited both in the text and in the Reference List (Bibliography). Contributors are responsible for gaining copyright clearance on figures, photographs or lengthy quotes used in their manuscript that have been published elsewhere.

2. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License that allows others to share and adapt the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

3. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository, or publish it in a book), with proper acknowledgement of the work's initial publication in this journal.

4. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access or The Open Access Citation Advantage). Where authors include such a work in an institutional repository or on their website (i.e., a copy of a work which has been published in eTropic, or a pre-print or post-print version of that work), we request that they include a statement that acknowledges the eTropic publication including the name of the journal, the volume number and a web-link to the journal item.

5. Authors should be aware that the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License permits readers to share (copy and redistribute the work in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the work) for any purpose, even commercially, provided they also give appropriate credit to the work, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do these things in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests you or your publisher endorses their use.