What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter [...]-T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
—
For Rik, in Xalapa, and for Richard, in Sacramento
Gravity is reading García Lorca.
Grace is reading Sylvia Plath.
I am reading Tee ‘S’ Eliot.
From time to time I look at them.
Gravity smells of decades past,
Grace smells of what is new.
They look at me over their books.
“Your problem is”, states Gravity,
“you ground yourself on the past.”
“His problem is”, replies Grace,
“he has not learned uprootedness.”
The trees cast long shadows on the grass.
The birds sing songs of days to come.
The day is suddenly haunted by spirits.
—
I marvelled at this sudden change, for it seemed to me a mysterious work of God…
-Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love
Rik has unearthed another testimony of time passing… (Portrait Taken Where the Sun Beats of He Who the Blogger Used to Be A Decade and a Half Ago) [à propos the dream]
—
What we might have been listening to back then… What we woke up listening to this morning…
April 1, 2008 at 10:58 am
Ora habria que pensar como se relaciona la gracia con el pasado y la gravedad con el futuro, quizas la pena transfigurada en el tiempo del “out of joint”. Uf, nunca te vi con mata (y nunca fui a la Tasca, no me llevaste canijo).
April 1, 2008 at 1:08 pm
mexican food and the problem of authenticity: people here always ask me “how authentic” such and such restaurant is and my answer is always: i don’t know… yes there is burritos and there is tlacoyos: tex-mex and mexican.
but in general this whole thing of something being “authentic” bothers me. Take it to a different level and people will be (are) asking each oter: are you an “authentic” american? are you an “authentic” mexican? what does this “authenticity” mean… the way in which something is done in a particular place and time?
a particular food, especially abroad, is always re-imagined: for fun click here for a for a funny reimagination/reinterpretation not only of the food but of some symbols and images. the restaurant’s name is “el veracruz” and yet their sign boasts a guitar, a big ’sombrero’ and a ‘poncho’?
April 1, 2008 at 4:16 pm
I agree. I also find the term “authentic” problematic, to say the least. But it’s also true that food, (like cheese, or wine, or spirits) can have traceable “origins”, even if these have changed throughout time (and space). Most people can identify a cheeseburger, or know what champagne is. No one would dream of paying to drink champagne mixed with Coke. Of course you can mix it if you want to, and maybe be crazy enough to pay for it. But I guess almost everyone would agree that it tastes better with orange juice, or with kir, in any case, if not just chilled and on its own.
Mexican food is particularly mis-represented. Cheeseburgers, or even Italian or Chinese food do not have that problem. Mexican food accepts variations (just like the hamburger does), but I think it’s not essentialism if we argue that it should be a good thing if people understood that bloody Taco Bell is not Mexican Food. Taco Bell is something else. If people like hard-shell tacos, fair enough, but they shouldn’t be disappointed when they can’t find them anywhere in Mexico (luckily).
So, on the one hand I’m right there with you that “authenticity” is not only artificial but dangerous. At the same time, I think that Mexican food has suffered from mis-representations. “But what is a misrepresentation?” you may rightly ask. Well, eating Spaguetti bolognese inside a hamburger bun would be one. If I sold the world the idea that Italian spaguetti bolognese is meant to be eaten inside a hamburger bun, wouldn’t all Italians and Italian food lovers would be upset? Why would Mexicans abroad have to forever deal with the myth that we eat burritos -when we don’t- and that we slam tequila as if the world was coming to an end?
April 1, 2008 at 4:16 pm
I’m sorry for my lack of articulation. I’ve spent hours editing my bloody chapter and struggling with the open-source software…
April 1, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I’m an authentic American ‘cuz I’ll shoot you if you say any different.
April 1, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Mexican food is already a hybrid cuisine. I see your point about ‘authentic’, especially in the way as to portray national patriotism and heterogenesitation of a quite diverse gatronomy that certainly varies form state to state. In their logic, postmodernists would argue that there is nothing culturally original or authentic anymore, and food would not be exception, as its meaning is left to the transformation and subjective interpretation of the eaters. So the consumer makes ‘Mexicaness’ based in their own experience.
I am prone to detach myself for such arguments of happily-ever-after globalisation, particularly in the logic of a postomodern logic of non-barriers and non-geographically driven cultural products. While I agree that there is no purity and pristiness in any symbolic product and process, because culture has always been an ongoing process of influence and obliquiness, as put by G. Canclini, still at some we should be more pragmatic, as critical realists would counterargue. Yes, at some point we Mexicans, whatever MExicanity means (even if that is what my passport says) somehow have a shared code, non shared by those living in some other part of the world, some unknown, unwritten, tacit consensual devices by which we are able to identify what and how is the food we are served and anticipate its taste and which is not. And definetely those chiles rellenos I was served in London’s Chiquito do not taste at all as the ones I eat ‘home’. I am really sorry but my troat is 29 years old and has been used to a particular taste and flavour and my brain nerves already code ‘enchiladas’ as remojadas en salsa verde. Sorry, posmodern thought simply won’t convice my glándulas saboríperas o como se llame of which is my (familiar) food and which is not. Surely the day I discovered my afghani boyfriend was cooking ‘Iranian’ food and presented with nothing more than huevos a la mexicana con tortillas de harina I just thought that it wasn´t entirely Mexican after all. Just like cornish pasties are the regional dish of my hometown, Pachuca. But yes, as soon as something tastes familiar it immediately takes me home and appropriate it as ‘mine’ as distinctive of the alien, unstasty, ‘other’.
April 2, 2008 at 2:09 am
“Mexican food is particularly mis-represented. Cheeseburgers, or even Italian or Chinese food do not have that problem. ”
This just isn’t true. Chinese food is grossly misresprented in the West. I studied Chinese lanague and culture for two years with various Chinese teachers (as in from China), and they were horrified at what passed as Chinese food in the states. Not only that but it’s just silly to suggest that there is one “Chinese” food just as it is to suggest that there is one “Mexican” food.
Perhaps because my children are not “authentic” I feel this debate on more than an intellectual level. My children are hybrids really. And I wonder if they willl spend their whole lives being caught up in some kind of notion of authenicity and of never quite being authentic enough. i do think it is very dangerous to long for authenicity, and I hope I can teach my children to move beyond that. Can I teach my kids to be a real Mexcian when I am not Mexican? And what would you all think of me if I tried? And more than that can I teach to be a real American? I’ve had people openly ask me “How could you have kids?” Ai. Like they’re not really human. And yes while this conversation may seem to be about food, I think it does raise interesting questions about longing for authenicity and how that might play out in more than just food.
I think though that longing for food from home really isn’t about authenticity. What I often long might not be authentic in some eyes. When we feel that homesickness is it really about loning authenticity? I’m not sure.
April 2, 2008 at 2:58 am
y que hacer entonces con musica como el pasito duranguense? que, segun tengo entendido, empezo en Chicago con musicos que son inmigrantes mexicanos: es musica auntentica mexicana o no? depende de la opinion de sus creadores o de sus escuchas? aqui un ejemplo del grupo Patrulla 81: chequen los comentarios ahi en youtube… expresiones de racismo y xenofobia, una de las razones por las que me da miedo esto de la (in)autenticidad.
April 2, 2008 at 3:02 am
oops! that meant to be me my post but i’m momentarily stealing my wife’s computer.
April 2, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Mireya and Ernesto, more than any postmodern theorists/thought I was thinking of what seems to be at the heart of Borges’ ‘philosophical’ fiction: the problem, or rather, the non-problem of representation, and therefore, of mis-representation.