food, migrants, emotional affect

This weeks readings by Mannur and Sutton focus on food and explicitly link the emotional with the physical: the smell and taste with affect. Mannur and Sutton posit that the enjoyment of food acts for migrants as Turan's facilitating environments act for the Palestinian diaspora. In a way, consuming food, consuming the taste and smells are a replication of home. 

Sutton states that food acts as a remedy for fragmentation, a move towards 'wholeness' where one becomes aware (or is reminded) out of their state of individuality away from home into a "recognition of a wider integrity of things," (125) evoking knowledge that others are eating the same food. By grounding his essay in the work of Fernandez's theory of "return to the whole" for displaced persons, as well as Greek concepts such as xenitia (estrangement, death, loss of social relatedness) and the Kalymnian tradition of pestellomata (food sent to migrants), Sutton examines the burning desire for homeland and the accompanying answer of food triggering memory.  In focusing on Kalymnian migrants and food tradition, Sutton is careful to point out that local is not always the same as national, Kalymnian not equalling Greek, and that local differences become more intense in the migrant context, however this is not examined beyond citing a Greek couple in England and a disagreement on how a certain dish is made.

It is Anita Mannur who delves into this issue with more vigour. In relating "the powerful place food occupies in our cultural imagination" and how food forms community for migrant Indians, Mannur focuses on how the differences in regional foods and her migrant childhood consumption of such variety have created her sense of home. This sense of home is much different that the regionally specific repertoire of Indian restaurants in the U.S.  She comments that "not everyone necessarily feels 'at home' in these spaces [Little Indias that dot the U.S. landscape]…because they appear not to fit a standard expectation of what Indian means." Indeed, there is a common occurrence of diasporic homogenizations via the commercialization of culture. Chinese food in Toronto's downtown Chinatowns is regionally specific to Cantonese cuisine, and is not at all representative of the huge array of regionally varying cuisine in China. Yet this is all most of us have access to, and shapes our understanding of Chinese identity.

Again, I believe I was struck with the so-what?ness of these articles, as this concept of food triggering wholeness, emotional affect and memory is something we all experience whether this is in a diasporic context or a nostalgic non-diasporic context. I would have appreciated the examination of how food shapes and misshapes identity, along the lines of developing the idea brought up by both Mannur and Sutton of the homogenization of regional into national. The concept of food care packages and airport security is something only briefly hinted at in Sutton's piece, however creates a current problem, and possibly rupture for the continuing of pestellomata tradition which is pressing and relevant to examine as well. 

Questions:

1. how else has food misshapen the identity of diasporic communities in North America?

2. airport security and migrant food. discuss.