On Memory of Plates and Dishes

The aim of the article is to discuss how elements of foodnarratives meals and kitchen tools used for cooking are used in order toconsolidate and shape the Croatian cultural memory, especially in the contextof its Mediterranean heritage.For this reason, the texts by Veljko Barbieri,collected in the four volumes under the common and significant title Kuharski kanconijer. Gurmanska sjećanja Mediterana , are analysed. His circum-culinarynarratives are a combination of encyclopaedic knowledge, references tohistorical and literary sources, personal memories and literary fiction. They canbe easily inscribed in the Croatian (collective and individual) identity discoursesince they are able to strengthen the collective (either national andsupranational, or geo-regional) identity, and to construct the cultural memory.They also show Croatia's affiliation to the Western world along with itscultural-civilization rooting in antiquity, the Mediterranean region andChristianity, thus forming a part of the founding memory that develops anarrative about the very beginnings of Croatian presence on this land. The gastronomicnarratives serve to create the cultural memory and this version of historywhich is to stabilize the social identity described by Pierre Nora and AndreasHuyssen. Through his stories, Barbieri shapes memory based on therepresentation of the past. In the analysed narratives, the memory carriers aredishes and plates which find reference to the oldest history of Croatiarendered by myths and other narratives. Associated with dishes, the pots enablethe narrator to recall the past and the identity coded in individual dishes.They also participate in the processes of repeating, storage and rememberingwhich generate a symbiotic relationship between man and thing. The memorycarriers that is, food and plates depicted in Barbieri's culinary narratives donot convey their content in a neutral way, but construct their marked images.