ABSTRACT
This chapter examines topics such as the visual representation of food and related practices, like cooking, eating or abstaining from eating, taste-making, and the ethics of food production and consumption, as revealed by the dynamics of food and memory. Food can be read as both a place and a medium of memory, a consistent part of various types of retrospective narratives that tap into either more neutral modes of memory or into nostalgia, traumatic memory, and sense memory. Nostalgia appears to be partly responsible for the lack of a substantial social critique or significant references to life outside the restaurant, as much of the narrative drive seems to be partly motivated by the need to feel a part of a collective cultural past. English-language autobiographical cartoonists appear to be explicitly interested in exploring the role played by food in the complicated process of memory-making and self-representation.
