Nineteenth-Century French Studies

Abstract:

Stemming from the Commune, the social and gustatory experiment of the Marmites exemplifies concepts of solidarity, conviviality and manger-ensemble that provide a model for the contemporary French context of economic inequity. The socially-conscious feminist engagement responsible in establishing the Marmites offers an alternative vision to Versaillais representations of helpless cantinières and threatening pétroleuses. While French food history traditionally equates this bloody period with an obsessive quest for meat in all its forms, we examine instead how, both in practical and philosophical terms, the Marmites aligned with a nascent vegetarian and ecological sensibility as, in the largest sense, vivre-ensemble also includes living together with fellow non-human animals. (In French)