Decolonizing representation : Mexican American food interpretations of identity in San Antonio, Texas

Access restricted to the OSU CommunityIn this dissertation, I combine the fields of food studies, Chicana/o cultural studies, and a feminist perspective to analyze Mexican-American food representations of identity and their reification in a variety of texts with particular attention to colonization, identity, power, and subjectivity. The study invokes a critical multi-theoretical framework to examine Mexican Americans' subjective interpretation of their identity, which is an elaboration, reflection, and critique of historical, political, cultural, literary, and everyday discourses. The purpose of the dissertation is to trace the colonizing production of Mexican-American representational discourses to the diasporic origins of what is considered Mexican cuisine to the present. By emphasizing the specific historical and geographic reality of San Antonio, Texas, this work articulates and decolonizes Mexican-American identity through food