Abstract :
[en] My study focuses on the culinary practices of Moroccan women living in Milan hinterland in Italy. By adopting a praxeological approach (Warnier 2001), I study female subjectivation processes realized through food. My attention is given to (micro)practices (De Certeau 1980, Foucault in Martin 1993, Mahmood 2005, Mauss 1936) performed daily, by means of which the women considered shape their self and affirm their religious belonging in private and in public contexts.
Islamic normativity concerning food issues is at matter here, thus being analyzed in its multifaceted complexity. As a matter of fact, the actors involved need to face the constraints imposed by the migration context while trying to comply with religious rules, in their turns intertwined with remembered embodied practices. This implies some negotiations to be made, in particular concerning a different articulation of time, but also the mobilization of tactics and strategies (De Certeau 1980) to guarantee a reassuring proper self-definition.
In the private space, food practices keep on being influenced not only by the Islamic dietary prescriptions affirming what is not possible to eat, but also by the indications stressing what to eat – and eventually when and how to prepare it. A private consumption, reflecting a specific belief, materially informs a spiritual definition of the self. Furthermore, such dynamics go out the domestic context and perform in the public space. Everyday practices, and in particular those related to food, let an expression of Muslim migrants’ identity be realized in overdetermined backgrounds such as that which is under study. As a matter of fact, by preparing and sharing food, Moroccan women participate to local events - and consequently to the city social life - and thus they are allowed to affirm in public their religious belonging and some related claims. The so called “ethnic food” is protagonist of numerous intercultural events, aimed at letting an encounter with religious diversity take place in the perspective of a culture to taste. In those occasions, once a relationship is set up, other important issues can be approached, such as that of the freedom to practice religion.
My presentation will try to highlight such complex dynamics, stressing on the materiality of religious subjectivation. Photos and videos recording everyday practices and objects will be used to visually support the reflections presented.
De Certeau, Michel (1980). L’invention du quotidien. Tome I. Arts de faire. Paris: Gallimard.
Mahmood, Saba (2005). Politics of piety: the Islamic revival and the feminist subject, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Martin, Luther H.; Gutman, Huck e Hutton, Patrick H. (eds.) (1992). Tecnologie del sé. Un seminario con Michel Foucault, Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.
Mauss, Marcel (1936). Les techniques du corps, in Journal de Psychologie, XXXII, ne, 3-4, 15 mars - 15 avril.
Warnier Jean-Pierre (2001). A praxeological approach to subjectivation in a material world, in Journal of Material Culture, Vol. 6(1): 5–24.
