I've also recently discovered Ill Doctrine, which speaks to me in ways that many things in my current life don't. I realized that I miss my academic side, the one that pays attention the the world around herself and reads nonfiction books regularly. The one that thinks critically about subjects that matter to her. I discovered this part of myself during high school listening to Rage Against the Machine. Their lyrics and political activism led me to think critically about the world around me. Throughout my college and grad career, I focused on learning more about the varied history of the United States, especially focused on the Black Freedom Movement and other similar fights for equality and recognition. As I became focused on my career (totally unrelated to any of this), I lost sight of this part of myself and Jay Smooth's witty, intelligent and insightful commentary has reminded me of it.
As I have become more of a "foodie," I've found that my background in history has influenced how I seek out new recipes and knowledge. When I have a chance to pick it up, I adore reading through Gastronomica. Whenever I find myself in a bookstore, I'm not only looking at cookbooks, but also books that deal with historical and social aspects of food. If it's a used bookstore, I'm looking for old cookbooks. As a result, I've had this idea running in my head for a while that I want to explore the world of culinary history, but in relation to the racial, social, and political history of the US. So far, this has resulted in my buying culinary history books when I run across them in stores, but the READING of those books has been lacking.
So my idea is to expand what I write about on this blog and to attempt to blog more often (ha, we'll see how that goes; I've said that before). I'm going to write about things I'm reading (both history and current events) and my thoughts and questions about them. Most likely what you'll read here won't be hard and fast opinions, but rather my reflections or initial reactions to these things. I'm open to broadening my perspective, so if you read something I've written and agree or disagree, let me know. I just ask that you be respectful of others (not just myself) when posting any comments. (I've seen far too many comments sections online become festering areas of hatred and misunderstanding due to harshly worded snap judgements).
Without further ado, here is my first foray into this expansion of my blog's theme:
I recently read this blog post about a now derelict human zoo in Paris recently. I couldn't help but wonder if modern day tourists are any better than the people who went to this exhibition around the turn of the century. People who travel, especially to "exotic" locations, tend to be of a certain socioeconomic status and this also tends to mean they are white Americans which carries its own sense of superiority or privilege that, if not carefully monitored, can lead to the former.
Working in a field that deals with a lot of people who travel, I see a wide range of behaviors. People's behaviors toward food while traveling is quite telling. There are people who will only eat at American chains when abroad, unsure of and sometimes distrusting of local cuisines. Along a similar line, there are those people who will only stay in resorts that provide a high level of familiarity and comfort. If the restaurants do offer local cuisine, it tends to be (like the rest of the resort experience) molded into something familiar to tourists' palates. There are also tourists who try to seek out the true local cuisine while traveling (I'm one of these, I love exploring new foods). However, it could be argued that restaurants are a far cry from a true expression of a cuisine. I would know; my mother cooked from scratch my entire childhood and I've never had anything at a restaurant that captures the same essence of my mother's cooking. There are also people who want a "true" experience and will seek out a way to interact with people in a more intimate manner, preferably through home stays or simply making friends and going to their homes to eat. These varied attitudes towards local cuisines could also be applied to interactions with all other aspects of the culture and the people.
I wonder if, in a tourist role, it is entirely possible to have an open and honest experiential dialog with the culture you have chosen to visit. In all roles, you are coming to the experience expecting the host culture to be a certain way, whether it be a frightening, foreign entity that you're not entirely sure you actually want to know or it be an authentic expression of what you think the culture is. In all manners, the people and the culture become something that you consume. You expect to absorb something and to take something away, but rarely is traveling thought of a dialog. This is where I start to feel like modern day tourists end up being quite similar to the people who visited Paris's human zoo in the early 1900s. I can see the people going to this exhibition of other peoples and cultures with the variety of perspectives that we currently display when traveling, but not seeing the experience as a dialog. They were there to observe, judge, and experience, but they weren't necessarily there to see these people and their cultures as anything but what they had been taught to expect.
This is not to say that I believe that going to another place and consuming another culture is entirely equivalent to moving people from their homeland into a farcical representation of it in another country. This seems more exploitative. However, I would be very interested to know the situations around these people moving into these replicas of what was deemed their cultures. Were they forced? Coerced? Willing? What happened to them once the "human zoo" was shut down? How did they view their position and their role at the park? It's easy to demonize the French empire, but it is a double edged sword in that it removes all sense of agency from the people who inhabited the park. By doing this, are we any better than their contemporaries since we are seeing them as objects without any free will or power in their situation? If anyone knows of anything written about these people, I would be interested in reading more.
