The aura of French gastronomy is the result of a political will
Long relegated to the far right, food themes are increasingly being appropriated for identity and xenophobic purposes. Some terroirist voices claim to want to protect French gastronomy from the “assaults of multiculturalism”. Yet, it is worth remembering that the soft power of our cuisine largely relies on foreign influences allowed by colonization.
Difficult to translate into other languages as it seems quintessentially French, terroir carries with it a complex network of representations – landscapes, climates, agricultural productions, and cultural traditions. It is a “geographical area defined by a human community that develops over time a set of distinctive cultural features […] based on interactions between the natural environment and human factors”, according to the National Institute of Origin and Quality (INAO), the National Institute for Agricultural Research, Food, and the Environment (INRAE), and UNESCO.
In the plural, the expression “terroirs” carries with it an imagined sense of vernacular practices and artisanal know-how. Nestled on hillsides or in hedgerows, it is the aestheticization of rurality. How can one not be charmed by “terroirs” at a time when ultra-liberalism continuously challenges the boundaries of time and space? Tangible and sensory, “terroirs” seem to ground us in the real earth, while elsewhere, goods traverse the world at lightning speed.
In recent years, certain factions of the far right and identitarian right have not hesitated to appropriate this reference, donning berets and overflowing country tables with “homegrown” products. On social media, groups of neo-fascist youths portray themselves feasting on checkered tablecloths. This aesthetic allows these groups to evoke an image of a bygone France, centered on simple family values and a lifestyle far removed from alienating modernity. It is during these rustic village feasts that a nostalgia for an authentic France, presented as on the verge of disappearing, is reignited.
In a cultural battle context, the questions…
