ABSTRACT

In Italy, tomatoes exist at the intersection of national-cultural culinary pride, Mediterranean petro-politics, agro-environmental policy, and even gender politics. They occupy such an important place in the Italian imaginary, and in the world’s imaginary of Italy, that their cultural and culinary stature obscures the deplorable conditions of their production, and silences the voices of those whose labour delivers them to the global table. In this article, we examine the tomato harvest in three contemporary works that confront the conditions of agricultural migrant labour in Puglia and Lazio: Leogrande’s (2016) book Uomini e caporali, the noir novel Bloody Mary by Vichi and Gori (2008), and Mariani’s (2017) docu-musical film The Harvest. Through an environmental humanistic approach we unravel persistent tropes in these different forms of representation: toxicity and toxic masculinity; socio-cultural isolation; narrative and biological hybridity. These themes foreground the human costs of the harvest, but they also expose the challenges and limitations of representing it. We argue that, although the work they do is of vital importance, by dedicating little attention to tomatoes themselves and sidelining the tomato’s cultural destination on the Italian table, these accounts risk reinforcing the divide between comfortable meals and the punishing labor of the harvest.

摘要

在意大利，西红柿存在于民族文化烹饪自豪感，地中海石油政治，农业环境政策甚至性别政治的交汇处。他们在意大利的想象和世界的意大利的想象中占据着如此重要的地位，以至于他们的文化和烹饪地位掩盖了他们可悲的生产条件，并压制了那些将他们推向全球舞台的人们的声音。在本文中，我们研究了三本当代作品，它们都在普利亚和拉齐奥面临着农民工的挑战，其中包括：利奥格兰德（2016）的书籍《Uomini e caporali》，黑色小说《血腥玛丽》（Vichi and Gori）（2008）和玛利亚尼（Mariani）的作品。 （2017年）纪录片音乐电影The Harvest。通过一种环境人文主义的方法，我们以这些不同形式的表现形式揭示了持久的对立：毒性和有毒的男性气质；社会文化隔离；叙事与生物的融合。这些主题突出了收获的人为代价，但也暴露了代表收获的挑战和局限性。我们认为，尽管他们所做的工作至关重要，但由于他们很少关注西红柿本身，而忽略了意大利餐桌上的西红柿文化目的地，因此，这些说法可能会加剧舒适餐食与收成的惩罚性劳动之间的鸿沟。