A Rigorous Diet: Food in Luisa Passerini's <em>Autoritratto di gruppo</em>

Abstract

A Rigorous Diet: Food in Luisa Passerini's Autoritratto di gruppo Staiscy Diuorski University oj CaUjoruia, Los Angeles Current criticai studies have demonstrated that food, as the object of social constraints and personal desires, plays a centrai role in the creation and niaintenance of gender categories. While across time and geography there are major diflerences in the relationship it is between wonien and food, also possible to identity contniuities.As Maria (iiuseppina Muzzarelli and Lucia nuity is Re note in cibo e le donne nella cultura e nella storia, one conti- that the relationship between food and wonien has represented relations of power to be niaintained and reinforced or changed. ' The relationship complex between wonien, power and food first is present, as Helene Cixous inaugurated also claims, in the fable of our first hook. Eve's action a history not only of control over wonien and food, but of consuniption as a means used by women to express desire tale and transgress authority. Proni the story of Eve through the of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the appie has been a concrete exainple of the gendered nature of authority and expression.- While food, power autobiography. and expression are centrai concerns of Luisa is Passerini's is Autoritratto di i^ruppo, there no appie. Instead, there an onion.The onion presents the reader with an entirely different froni the appie. set of associations The onion is is a pungent vegetable whose preparation in requires tears. It also a at poor vegetable both the center of its its terms of price and nutritional value. While thick white flesh an appie has a core, at the center ot thin, uneven layers an onion is einpty.Thc narrator's description focuses on the inany layers ot an onion, relating theni to feinale subjectivity: a slow shedding of skins, like an onion back, back, you alniost can't capture another, one will it with the eye — -one woinan inside layers woman through another. ^ Since Luisa 's^ autobiography be an attempt to slowly describe the multiple is of hcr identity, the image ot the onion apt for two reasons. First, the onion introduccs the centrai metaphors of food and diet that run through Autoritratto. CARTE ITALIANE, lOL. (2()()H>