DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2023.1.2.| GERBER, KÜHNLENZ: DE-CONSTRUCTING FOOD_ INSIGHTOUT 1(2023) 17as a source(especially in everyday historical contexts) is certainly worthwhile and offers a previouslyoften overlooked potential for the study of“race”,“class”and“gender”. An analysis of domestic workin“settler colonial house and plantation museums”,which barely touches on the(domestic and slave)work performed there, shows how focusing on ordinary everyday things enables intersectional andpower-critical views of US history that have beenshaped by“race”,“class” and“gender” asymmetriesand the way they are communicated in museums.Williams-Forson uses various household objects andcooking utensils from George Washington’s MountVernon Home Estate House Museum to show howthe search for the“absent potential” of these objectscan lead to an intersectionally more aware processing and mediation of a history shaped by violenceand inequality.Food and drink can serve as a means of constructing community.Holly Porteousdemonstrates thisusing the example of a British museum that is also alibrary, archive and neighbourhood meeting point.Offering a cup of tea turns out to be an inclusiveelement for(new) visitors: not only does it make iteasier for them to cross the threshold to the museum and strike up a conversation, but it also helpsthem to stave off loneliness. A porcelain tea set isused; in other words, a special level of respect isshown to the guests by using a specific materialculture. In this way, the museum becomes an inclusive venue that creates a sense of community andcohesion through a feminist reinterpretation of thepractice of hospitality.“race” and a reflection of one’s own sense of position in order to draw up and implement diversity- andclassism-sensitive intervention formats. Personallife stories and emotions are a fundamental element of the intersectional exploration of not leastmedia-mediated discourses, for example throughfood ads in Germany in the 1990s and 2000s.Their approach shows that one’s own experiencesand sensitisation to specific classist forms of discrimination gives rise to situated knowledge that canbe used as a resource for empowerment and to address discriminatory structures. To make the text asinclusive as possible to its readership, it is publishedin both English and German.Ana Daldonuses a card game to test the waters, asit were, for the best way to exhibit the concept of fat.The fact that the results of the group work carriedout in the workshop were so different also illustrates the constructed quality of exhibitions. This playful and creative approach also proves to be a queermethod in that it dissolves the boundaries betweenmuseum experts, potential visitors, teachers andlearners through a collective curatorial practice.Last but not least, queer and fat activism have similarities and parallels, also linguistically, through there-appropriation of pejorative terms and experiences of discrimination and pathologising.As much as deconstruction was the common threadrunning through the workshop, the outcome itselfwas constructive. For one thing, the presentationsresulted in the publication of this first edition of insightOut.Philipp HagemannandAlexander Wagnersee foodand nutrition as decidedly political fields, and theircontribution is devoted to the relationship betweenfood, class and family-based care relationships. Aresearch laboratory for interventions against classism–*FLINK for short – is set up under the rubricsof gender, materiality, power, space, knowledge,Working and exploring collectively, i.e.through exchanges, meant that the supposed gap between museum and universityresearch receded into the background, asdid the boundaries between scientific disciplines and between objectivity and emotionality.
