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277591

Food culture and power in Bertolt Brecht’s Saint Joan of the Stockyards

Article

Last updated: 04 Jan 2025

Subjects

-

Tags

Theater
Theater techniques

Abstract

This paper is a literary cultural study of food culture in Bertolt Brecht's Saint Joan of the Stockyards (1969), exposing how food culture wreaked havoc on the power relations at the time of the economic slump of the Great Depression years between 1929 and 1933. Taking Spivak's theory of subalternity, Marxist theory, and Gramsci's hegemony as the methodology to reread the play, this study attempts to find answers to these questions: how does food culture become a powerful lens that magnifies the intricate power relations between the capitalist elite and the subaltern proletariat inside the American food industry?  How are the Brechtian technique and Marxist thought used as a vessel of both social and economic reform? How does Brecht seek to excavate the reasons behind hunger and social injustices by increasing the consciousness of the audience to participate, think, argue, and act? In addition, Brecht's distanciation effect is described in this paper as a wake-up call to inspire the audiences to think, criticize, and then act. It also reminds the audiences that Capitalist economic mismanagement, class struggle, and practices of power over food distribution worsen the conditions of the poorer and mute their voices, transforming them into mere subalterns.

DOI

10.21608/jltmin.2023.277591

Keywords

Brecht, Saint Joan of the Stockyards, Spivak, Food Culture, power, Subalternity

Authors

First Name

Rachel

Last Name

Awad

MiddleName

Raffat Zaki

Affiliation

Department of English, Faculty of Al-Alsun (Languages), Minia University, Egypt

Email

bassemrocha@yahoo.com

City

Minya

Orcid

-

Volume

10

Article Issue

1

Related Issue

38569

Issue Date

2023-01-01

Receive Date

2022-08-25

Publish Date

2023-01-01

Page Start

62

Page End

87

Print ISSN

2735-4520

Online ISSN

2735-4539

Link

https://jltmin.journals.ekb.eg/article_277591.html

Detail API

https://jltmin.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=277591

Order

5

Type

مقالات بحوث مبتکرة

Type Code

1,567

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Journal of Languages and Translation

Publication Link

https://jltmin.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Food culture and power in Bertolt Brecht’s Saint Joan of the Stockyards

Details

Type

Article

Created At

23 Jan 2023