Magister Artium - MA (Anthropology/Sociology)

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Sensory flows of spice: a multisensory ethnography exploring how spice influences home cooks’ sense of belonging in Cape Town
(Universty of the Western Cape, 2023) Deers, Rhoda; Ellis, William
The history of Cape Town is entangled with the spice trade, slavery, colonialism and orientalism. The Cape cuisine narratives often romanticize fixed cultural cuisines, as seen with the "Cape Malay" cuisine, which is only acknowledged for its connection to a spicy Asian origin story and celebrated for its traditional, authentic, and well-balanced aromatic dishes. These exotic narratives of “Cape Malay” kitchens reflect the past segregation programs of colonialism and apartheid, as the home of Cape Malay remains fixed within the rows of colourful houses at the foot of Table Mountain in Bo-kaap previously known as the Malay quarters. This embellishment of a spicy orientalist narrative of Cape history continues to silence the realities of complex overlapping identities that are held in “coloured” bodies in post-apartheid South Africa. It is these fixed cuisine narratives that begin to unravel when spice is used as a narrator for the Cape. I draw on the works of Edward Said’s contrapuntal reading and offer a reading-back of Cape Cuisine to search for the complexities of social lives and lived experiences.