Mediating Politics and Food: Nationalism, Populism, Identity

National Identity
Potica, the leavened bread that reinvented Slovenia
“During the early 2000s when Slovenia was about to join the EU, potica became an even more important signifier of ‘us,’ meaning ‘Slovene’ was no longer being opposed only to ‘Yugoslav’, but also to the EU from which ‘we’ now needed to differentiate ourselves from.” (p.44-45)
  • Tominc, Ana (2014): Legitimising amateur celebrity chefs’ advice and the discursive transformation of the Slovene culinary national identity. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 17 (3), 316–337.
Populism
“In this article, we examine how
/…/ the banana – emerged and was then used as a totemic and highly suggestive symbol at the centre of political communication, gaining popularity in both political and popular discourse.”

This video explains the project and its findings:

Here is our presentation “Cripes! It’s Boris, Bangers and Bendy Bananas: Laughing our way to a great British Brexit” presented at Symposium on Irony and Nationalism in 2022 (organised by Alex Marshall at Sheffield Hallam University, UK). Our presentation starts at 2h 45 minutes: