The Taste of (Be)Longing: Food, Memory and Futurity among Palestinians in Britain

Barkley, Lucy ORCID: 0000-0003-1787-8998 (2024) The Taste of (Be)Longing: Food, Memory and Futurity among Palestinians in Britain. In: Cultural Heritage and Mobility From a Multisensory Perspective. Routledge. ISBN 9781032713748

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Abstract

Based on ethnographic research with Palestinians in Britain, this chapter explores an instance of ongoing culinary heritage-making in the diaspora, demonstrating the crucial role it plays in discourses of longing and belonging. Critically shedding light on the sensory dimensions of the consumption of Palestinian food, it shows how such embodied experiences narrate a ‘locational continuity’ (Rifkin 2017, 115) with the land of Palestine, even as they highlight the spatiotemporal ruptures of the diasporic condition. This allows an examination of food’s complex relationship with temporality, whereby both memory and futurity become deeply imbricated in participants’ everyday lives. Further, this enables us to study how the tastes of food – particularly in their absence or incompleteness – can inscribe, for some Palestinians, an enforced immobility. However, sensuous experiences of food can also provide fleeting moments of felt mobility, moments when a temporary “return to the whole” can be experienced, even when a literal return to the homeland is not possible (Sutton 2001). These instances, and the imaginaries that are built around them, emphasise the possibilities of being otherwise (Rifkin 2017): of a time when those both in Britain and in Palestine have greater freedom of movement once more. Moreover, by engendering political critique of the present and instilling hope for change, they can inspire activism aimed at achieving this alternative future.

Item Type:	Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Culinary traditions; Palestinian culture
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GT Manners and customs H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
Divisions:	Schools and Research Institutes > Countryside and Community Research Institute
Depositing User:	Caitlin Mackenzie
Date Deposited:	02 Oct 2024 09:41
Last Modified:	02 Oct 2024 09:45
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/14399

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