Fighting Gastrocolonialism in Indigenous Pacific Writing

Abstract

With one of the world’s highest percentages of obesity and its related diseases, especially cardiovascular problems and diabetes, the Pacific is perhaps one of the places in the world where the consequences of “gastrocolonialism” have become more damaging. This essay considers food consumption patterns by Pacific Islanders both in their home countries and in diaspora and engages with the critical conversation started by several Indigenous Pacific writers in their works and daily food activism against western culinary impositions and heritages. Apart from focusing on the authors’ critique of the idealization of western products, the multiple affective and cultural dependencies determining culinary choices, and the colonial, military or capitalist discourses shaping Pacific diets, I also read these works as contributing to the articulation of an Indigenous gastropolitics. The productive interrelation between these artists’ creative work and their activism arguably contributes to shape a transpacific process of resistance to gastrocolonialism which speaks across national boundaries to condemn urgent health problems across the region and aims at the recovery of Pacific health and well-being.

• Food in literature
• gastrocolonialism
• gastropolitics
• Pacific Island food
• Pacific literature

ORCID

Paloma Fresno-Calleja http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2094-7536

Notes

1 Following the example of Fiji, where the import of mutton flaps was banned in 2000 (Smart and Smart 2016, 157), Tonga also attempted to prevent their import in 2004, but this ban never eventuated due to fears that it would risk Tonga’s entry into the World Trade Organization (Plahe, Hawkes and Ponnamperuma 2013, 324). Similarly, Samoa banned the importation of turkey tails in 2007, but the ban was lifted in 2011, as a condition for Samoa joining the WTO (Smart and Smart 2016, 158).

2 Tuffery has also created a series of fish sculptures made with recycled cans of smoked mackerel to critique the depletion and exportation of fish, a traditional component of Pacific diets, then returning to the islands in its canned version (Baker 2012, 7).

3 See http://www.craigsantosperez.com/food-creative-writing/; http://www.kenyonreview.org/author/craig-santos-perez/.

4 The “from” in the title of Santos Perez’s three collections – From Unincorporated Territory [Hacha] (2008), From Uincorporated Territory [Saina] (2010) and From Unincorporated Territory [Guma’] (2014) – as well as in the titles of individual poems suggests the fragmentary yet fluid nature of his work and reflect – in his own words – a “trans-book threading … as poems change and continue across books’ (Washburn 2015, 7).

5 Some of the pieces on Spam included in From Unincorporated Territory [Guma’] are revised or expanded versions of previously published poems like “SPAM’s Carbon Footprint” (https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/spams-carbon-footprint/) and “SPAM’s Carbon Footprint (SuperBowl Edition)” published in 2011 (http://www.locuspoint.org/volume3/honolulu/perez.html/) and 2013 (http://www.taosjournalofpoetry.com/spams-carbon-footprint-super-bowl-edition/).

6 The term originally referred to “pea soup”, but has now come to refer to canned products in general and corned beef in particular.

7 Setoga is also well known for his t-shirts reworking logos and brands to condemn stereotypical images of Pacific peoples and address key socio-cultural concerns for the community. See http://www.popohardwear.com/shop/popohardwear-t-shirts/.

8 Email communication, 17 November 2016.

9 These essays are framed in the context of a larger project, a mixed-genre book entitled Ruined Appetites, currently in progress.

10 Email communications, 17 November and 22 December 2016.