Abstract

Food connects people and land, a link that the Italian Fascist regime exploited through their seizure of local culinary culture for the promotion of national demographic goals. This article traces the connections between the regime’s concurrent drives for food production and sexual reproduction. It will show the propagandistic potential of recipes, and also the limits of top-down dietary change under dictatorship. Ricettari, propagandistic recipe pamphlets, blended public politics and private practices into a heady cocktail, one that cast autarkic cookery and sexual reproduction as valuable contributions to the Fascist state. These documents establish a clear link between the regime’s demographic policy and the autarkic campaigns in favor of Italian grain production. Cooking, the professed subject of ricettari, conveyed political neutrality—it falsely marked the documents as feminine and innocuous. So too did design: small and light, these stapled leaflets could be easily rolled up and stuck in an apron pocket. Portability thus insured that these documents could cross the threshold from the public rally to the private kitchen. Once there, they could directly address women, and attempt to modify their daily habits in ways that would change the body from the inside out. At stake in the ricettari lies a broader contribution to Food Studies in terms of food and politics: this unique form of ephemera reveals that the Italian Fascist regime took a pronatalist approach to cuisine.

摘要

粮食将人与土地联系在一起，这是意大利法西斯政权通过夺取当地烹饪文化来促进国家人口统计目标而加以利用的纽带。本文追溯了该政权同时进行的粮食生产和有性生殖活动之间的联系。它将显示食谱的宣传潜力，以及独裁统治下自上而下的饮食变化的局限性。赖斯塔里（Ricettari）是宣传食谱的小册子，将公共政治和私人做法融合在一起，制作出令人兴奋的鸡尾酒，这种鸡尾酒将自给自足的烹饪和有性繁殖作为对法西斯国家的宝贵贡献。这些文件在政权的人口政策与支持意大利谷物生产的自给自足运动之间建立了明确的联系。烹饪，自称是ricettari传达了政治中立性，它错误地将文件标记为女性化且无害。设计也是如此：这些装订好的传单小巧轻便，可以轻松卷起并粘贴在围裙口袋中。因此，可移植性确保了这些文件可以越过从公共集会到私人厨房的门槛。到达那里后，他们可以直接与女性打交道，并尝试以从内到外改变身体的方式改变其日常习惯。在食物和政治方面，莱斯塔里所面临的重大挑战是对食品研究的更广泛贡献：这种短暂的短暂形式揭示了意大利法西斯政权对烹饪采取了以pronatalist的方式。