https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i3.098
Culinary Marginalization and the Politics of Food: Memory, Identity, and Resistance
PARVATHI T S
Assistant Professor
Department of English,
MES College Marampally (Autonomous), Kerala
parvathitsaju@gmail.com
Abstract: This paper examines food as a critical cultural and political signifier in Dalit literature, foregrounding its intersections with caste, memory, and embodied experience. Moving beyond conventional understandings of food as a marker of taste, culture, or tradition, the study argues that in Dalit narratives, food functions as a site where structures of caste-based oppression are materially enacted and symbolically contested. Drawing on texts such as Joothan by Omprakash Valmiki and Karukku by Bama, the paper explores how practices of eating, serving, and sharing food are governed by the ideology of purity and pollution, which underpins caste hierarchy. These everyday practices reveal how the body itself becomes a site of regulation, exclusion, and humiliation within caste society.
Drawing on insights from trauma and memory studies, the paper conceptualizes “culinary trauma” as a mode of remembering wherein experiences of hunger, deprivation, and caste-based humiliation are inscribed in both individual and collective memory. These narratives not only archive suffering but also articulate forms of resistance through the reclamation and revaluation of Dalit food practices, challenging dominant caste aesthetics and hierarchies. Ultimately, the paper argues that food in Dalit literature operates not merely as material sustenance but as a powerful discursive and affective site that exposes the everyday workings of caste oppression while enabling alternative articulations of dignity, identity, and agency.
Keywords: Culinary Marginalization, Politics of Food, Food Memory, Food Identity, Culinary Resistance, Food and Power
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