Racial Indigestion

Eating Bodies in the 19th Century

Nonfiction, History, Americas, United States, 20th Century
Cover of the book Racial Indigestion by Kyla Wazana Tompkins, NYU Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Kyla Wazana Tompkins ISBN: 9780814770054
Publisher: NYU Press Publication: July 30, 2012
Imprint: NYU Press Language: English
Author: Kyla Wazana Tompkins
ISBN: 9780814770054
Publisher: NYU Press
Publication: July 30, 2012
Imprint: NYU Press
Language: English

The act of eating is both erotic and violent, as one wholly consumes the object being eaten. At the same time, eating performs a kind of vulnerability to the world, revealing a fundamental interdependence between the eater and that which exists outside her body. Racial Indigestion explores the links between food, visual and literary culture in the nineteenth-century United States to reveal how eating produces political subjects by justifying the social discourses that create bodily meaning.
Combing through a visually stunning and rare archive of children’s literature, architectural history, domestic manuals, dietetic tracts, novels and advertising, Racial Indigestion tells the story of the consolidation of nationalist mythologies of whiteness via the erotic politics of consumption. Less a history of commodities than a history of eating itself, the book seeks to understand how eating became a political act, linked to appetite, vice, virtue, race and class inequality and, finally, the queer pleasures and pitfalls of a burgeoning commodity culture. In so doing, Racial Indigestion sheds light on contemporary “foodie” culture’s vexed relationship to nativism, nationalism and race privilege.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

The act of eating is both erotic and violent, as one wholly consumes the object being eaten. At the same time, eating performs a kind of vulnerability to the world, revealing a fundamental interdependence between the eater and that which exists outside her body. Racial Indigestion explores the links between food, visual and literary culture in the nineteenth-century United States to reveal how eating produces political subjects by justifying the social discourses that create bodily meaning.
Combing through a visually stunning and rare archive of children’s literature, architectural history, domestic manuals, dietetic tracts, novels and advertising, Racial Indigestion tells the story of the consolidation of nationalist mythologies of whiteness via the erotic politics of consumption. Less a history of commodities than a history of eating itself, the book seeks to understand how eating became a political act, linked to appetite, vice, virtue, race and class inequality and, finally, the queer pleasures and pitfalls of a burgeoning commodity culture. In so doing, Racial Indigestion sheds light on contemporary “foodie” culture’s vexed relationship to nativism, nationalism and race privilege.

More books from NYU Press

Cover of the book Anthropology and Law by Kyla Wazana Tompkins
Cover of the book Girls on the Stand by Kyla Wazana Tompkins
Cover of the book Critical Race Theory (Third Edition) by Kyla Wazana Tompkins
Cover of the book Another Country by Kyla Wazana Tompkins
Cover of the book Bird-Self Accumulated by Kyla Wazana Tompkins
Cover of the book The Third Asiatic Invasion by Kyla Wazana Tompkins
Cover of the book Spirituality, Inc. by Kyla Wazana Tompkins
Cover of the book Consorts of the Caliphs by Kyla Wazana Tompkins
Cover of the book From Africa to America by Kyla Wazana Tompkins
Cover of the book God is a Conservative by Kyla Wazana Tompkins
Cover of the book Legal Intellectuals in Conversation by Kyla Wazana Tompkins
Cover of the book The Wow Climax by Kyla Wazana Tompkins
Cover of the book Enfant Terrible! by Kyla Wazana Tompkins
Cover of the book Middle East Studies for the New Millennium by Kyla Wazana Tompkins
Cover of the book Abandoned by Kyla Wazana Tompkins
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy