Eating cake at the European Round Table: Panem et Circenses in the mediation of the European Union's 50th anniversary by the British and the Irish Press

Abstract

Abstract This article analyses the intersecting emotive expressions of nationalism, Euroscepticism, and Europeanness in Britain and Ireland during the European Union's 50th birthday festivities in March 2007. Such discursive manifestations in the Irish and British national press were occasioned by the display and public consumption of fifty-four national cakes at the Berlin Volkfest. The public, ritualistic, and convivial eating of national foods, represented a departure from the usual stale recipe of political summits, and was supposed to excite feelings of identity with the European Union project. Yet the event occasioned press, politicians, and public to delve into backward looking nationalist projections, the result of which was a media event riddled by fragmentation and diverging readings, which have to be interpreted via the multifarious relationships between globalization, national dishes and national identity.