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DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2023.1.5| TAVAKOLI: BUTTA LA PASTICHE!_ INSIGHTOUT 1(2023) 35 or cultural supremacy. 10 What has been missing in such accounts, however, is the acknowledgement that chauvinistic gestures may just as well emerge out of a genuine sense of affection for one’s home and perceived traditions as they may out of disdain (or disgust) for the Other. To champion one’s own na­tion is not necessarily the same thing as diminishing or disregarding another. Nations exist in both enact­ment and reception, and as becomes perhaps most clear in celebrations of nationhood by stateless or dispossessed populations, performances of national identity can be vital responses to the project of na­tion-building in the postcolonial era. 11 Furthermore, not all celebrations of nation freeze national identi­ty in some past time. The rise of national branding decouples contemporary nations from their pasts. A nation can, for example, claim to be the future of glo­bal business without having to address its business dealings or policies to date. 12 It is important, I think, not to characterise Gastro­nationalism simply as disingenuous efforts to mask bigotry in the seeming low states of food culture, or even as necessarily deliberate celebrations of na­tional identity. More helpful, perhaps, would be to understand Gastronationalism as symptomatic of homogenisation under capitalism. Alison Leitch, for example, notes similarities between activism around endangered species and activism around preserva­tion of national identity, arguing that commonalities are a consequence of late capitalism and its asso­ciated tending towards sameness. Nor are all efforts to protect food and food traditions necessarily Gas­tronationalistic. The same geographical indication (GI) labels that dissect maps also provide small-scale producers with a way to maintain relevance in an in­creasingly globalised market. Explaining Gastrona­tionalism, however, is not the same as justifying it. To note that GI labels take the relationship between nature and nation as self-evident is not to say that GI labels exist to consolidate some form of national identity. Both can be strengthened at once, someti­mes in seeming contradiction. What the above efforts do have in common, however, is the affect of Camp. A notion coined by Christopher Isherwood, defined by Susan Sontag, and further de­veloped by writers such as Richard Dyer and Mor­ris Meyer, Camp encompasses an aesthetic quality that transforms the serious into the joyous without compromising any of its gravity. Often conflated with Kitsch, the Camp sensibility or mode is one that “rests on innocence. That means Camp discloses in­nocence, but also, when it can, corrupts it.” 13 Indeed, Camp and Kitsch describe entirely antithetical out­looks. Where Kitsch transforms high culture to low and celebrates debasement, to embrace the Camp is to approach one’s interests with respect if not re­verence. As a sensibility rather than theory or frame­work, Camp is not applied to an object of study but instead emerges out of a subject. 14 The“Camping” of imaginaries around food production—that is, addressing their aest­10 Cf. Troy Bickham,“Eating the Empire: Intersections of Food, Cookery and Imperialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain”, Past& Present , 198/1(2008), 71–109; Michaela DeSoucey,“Gastronationalism: Food Traditions and Authenticity Politics in the European Union”, American Sociological Review , 75/3(2010), 432–455; Atsuko Ichijo and Ronald Ranta, Food, National Identity and Natio­nalism: From Everyday to Global Politics (New York, 2016); Wynne Wright and Alexis Annes,“Halal on the Menu? Contested Food Politics and French Identity in Fast-Food”, Journal of Rural Studies , 32(2013), 388–399. 11 Cf. Fredric Jameson,“Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism”, Social Text , 15(1986), 65–88, at 78; Sahar Tavakoli,“The Empire Strikes Through: The Drawing and Redrawing of Political Maps in the British Museum”, 100 Histories of 100 Worlds in One Object , 2021, https://100histories100worlds.org/the-empire-strikes-through(accessed 21 July 2023). 12 Cf. Somogy Varga,“The politics of Nation Branding: Collective identity and public sphere in the neoliberal state”, Philosophy& Social Criticism , 39/8(Oct. 2013), 825–845, at 827. 13 Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York, 1966), 275. 14 Cf. ibid., 281.