The Dynamics of Nostalgia in the Construction of Diasporic Identity

Abstract

This chapter shows how elements of nostalgia are embedded within the food recipes of this particular diasporic community as well as in their songs. I analyse and show how the recipes and the songs function as pieces of nostalgia. I show how the idea of autonetic consciousness can be applied to recipes in diaspora. I explore the notion of mnemonic strategies employed to maintain culinary practices. My work is informed by writers who have concentrated on the value of culinary fiction in diasporic communities. My analysis focuses on the cultural practices which occupy the domestic sphere of those who reside in diaspora in Lockwood. I explore how aspects of nostalgia are embedded within the psyche of first-generation immigrants and how nostalgia is transmitted to the following generations. I call this particular type of nostalgia ‘migrational nostalgia.’ I show how the subjects from my cohort engage with this particular type of nostalgia and memory.

And, sick of the Present, I cling to the Past;

When the eye is suffused with regretful tears,

From the fond recollections of former years;

And shadows of things that have long since fled

Flit over the brain, like the ghosts of the dead

Thomas Pringle (Thomas Pringle, ‘Afar in the Desert’ in, C.F. Bates, (ed.) The Cambridge Book of Poetry and Song (Thomas Y Crowell, New York, 1882), p. 437.)