Nourishing the body, crafting the self, facing the other. Subjectivities and encounters through Moroccan food in Italy

Each individual is composed of material objects and practices that witness one’s personal life history and everyday life and which shape one’s same subjectivity (Julien and Rosselin 2009). Subjectivity that is fulfilled through material culture, the performing of which turns out to be a technology of the self (Martin, Gutman, Hutton 1988).
Considering the subject as the result of praxeological activities and of the incorporation of objects belonging to one’s meaningful universe of reference and action, my paper aims at exploring the construction of the self of Moroccan female migrants through their body techniques exerted while cooking. Specific gestures are performed to adhere to a cultural heritage which needs to be preserved while living abroad. An essentialized bodily tradition, relying on a set of specific objects, becomes the place where, on the one hand, the members of a community share knowledge.
On the other hand, such tradition lets an encounter with otherness take place. As a matter of fact, in the context considered, food is a frequent object of intercultural policies and practices, giving migrants a controlled opportunity to express themselves while producing material culture. A locally held Arabic cooking class, for example, provides the occasion to perform cultural differences (or similarities) by means of corporeal languages.
My presentation will consider the body both in its private and public dimensions, since constantly intertwined. Through images and videos I will show what such embodied material knowledge consists of and in which ways it is the object of social dynamics and interactions.