Otherized food, racialized bodies

Discourses of food, smell and racism in Nicholas Kharkongor’s Axone

Bibliographic Data

ID11860808
AuthorsRajbir Samal (0000-0003-2339-5562, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India, corresponding author), Binod Mishra (0000-0003-2364-6405, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India)
Year2024
Volume22
Issue1
Pages1-15
Publication date2024-01-02
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSouth Asian Popular Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1474-6689 • E-ISSN: 1474-6697
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14746689.2024.2328414
OpenAlexW4394720667
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited15

Axone is a recently released Indian film revolving around Northeastern cuisine. Through culinary reimagining, the film raises several issues regarding Northeastern migrants who largely remain invisible in the public discourse. The present article attempts to examine the embodied experiences of the Northeasterners in the Indian capital, Delhi, through the analysis of the film from a culinary lens. Affirming the film's status as a food film, the article first tries to locate axone in the Indian culinary order, which has been hegemonized by the caste ideas of ganda (dirty) and gandha (smelly). Secondly, it engages with the politics of otherness played around the Northeastern food by employing social and sensorial boundaries. Thirdly, it brings to the fore the discourse of racism, which is central to the experience of Northeasterners living in the city. Lastly, the article delists the Northeastern migrants only as victims of the city and explores their place-making strategies by taking into account the agentic potential of their culinary culture

Racism · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories

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