Cooking and feminism through Argentine literature

Abstract

This essay analyzes women’s connections with cooking through the work of three female writers from Argentina. I uncover key moments in the history of the country in which culinary practices represent a channel for larger reflections on gender struggles and women’s rights. I distinguish three representative cases within the complex and rich relationship between women, cooking, and feminism in Argentine literature: the incursion of nineteenth-century writers in recipe books; the feminists of the 1980s and their use of the culinary language as a political and erotic expression; and cooking and food as an exploration of new social and sexual orders in contemporary literature. Within each period, I focus on a particular writer and literary work: Juana Manuela Gorriti’s Cocina ecléctica (1890), Tununa Mercado’s short story “Antieros” (1988), and Gabriela Cabezón Cámara’s Las aventuras de la China Iron (2017). These Argentine authors provide their knowledge on the diverse cultural roots and habits in South American cooking and give predominance to senses and desire over rational prescriptions on women’s bodies, among other narrative strategies. Thus, analyzed as a corpus, these authors give us a broader idea of feminist practices through cooking and, ultimately, expand multiple meanings of feminism itself from a local perspective.

Keywords:

• Cooking
• feminism
• Argentina
• women writers
• feminist food studies
• cookbooks

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Stacy J. Williams (2014) has studied, for instance, American second-wave feminists who used food and cooking as a feminist expression.

2 Besides the works cited in this paragraph, other studies focusing on the connections on gender/feminism and food are: Adolph (2009), Cairnsand Johnston (2016), SegalandDemos (2016), and Goodman (2016). On Latin America, see also Castilleja Magdaleno (2005) and Scott (2009).

3 For Gorriti’s Cocina ecléctica see Elisabeth Austin (2008) and Paula Caldo (2017). For Tununa Mercado, consult the works by Sandra Jara (1996) and María Claudia André (2001).

4 The term criollo in Argentina usually indicates local origins but of Spanish roots, and it differentiates from indigenous. Rebekah Pite discusses the complexities of the term in her article “La cocina criolla” (2016).

5 On Argentina’s formation of a national cuisine, see Pilcher (2012) and Pite (2016).

6 Besides her work on women cooks, Paula Caldo has worked with Marcela Fugardo on the edition of La cocinera argentina (1881) by Virginia Pueyrredón de Pelliza . Fugardo has also edited the cookbook manuscript by María Varela (1837-1910) published in 2018 under the title Un recetario familiar rioplatense (A Family Recipe Book from the River Plate). Carina Perticone edited in 2020 La perfecta cocinera Argentina (1888), the first Argentine cookbook by Teófila Benavento, the pseudonym used by Buenos Aires socialite Susana Torres de Castex.

7 Laura Shapiro has analyzed the influence of domestic science education in nineteenth-century American women in Perfection Salad (1989) and Paula Caldo has made similar arguments for the Argentine context in Un cachito de cocinera (2017).

8 See, for instance, Amelia Palma, “Párrafos sobre Economía Doméstica,” Revista de Educación, no. 19 (1883): 6- 11.

9 Some of the Argentine editions or editions available in Argentina of Carreño’s book include an adaptation for public Argentine schools published in Paris by Librería Española de Garnier in 1897 (Compendio del manual de urbanidad y buenas maneras: arreglado por él mismo para el uso de las escuelas de ambos sexos y adoptado en las escuelas públicas de Buenos Aires), an edition in 1863, and 1873 by Imprenta Americana in Buenos Aires, another from 1872 printed in the province of Jujuy by Imprenta del Estado, and another one from 1871 by Imprenta Salteña in the province of Salta.

10 On the origins of feminist groups and the first uses of feminism as a concept in Argentina, see Asunción Lavrín (1995) and Dora Barrancos (2005).

11 For an in-depth analysis of hygienist theories and the first feminists in Argentina as well as references on women’s hygienist publications and endeavors, see Asunción Lavrín (1995) and Marcela Nari (2005).

12 Maria Claudia André connects “Antieros” with the concept of jouissance developed by Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous (André 2001, 139).