Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses the ways how Central Asian post-Soviet nationalisms inheriting the dual vision of local populations have been transmitted in the rhetoric of and about food on the Internet entering the global contest of sameness and difference within UNESCO/Guinness Records provided scene.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I analyze the ways how Central Asian nationalisms have been transmitted in the rhetoric of and about food on the Internet. I focus on the 'titular' nations of the post-Soviet Central Asia as a starting point for the further studies of food and identity correlation in this region. It is not simply the 'imagined community' I am looking at via the prism of food. I focus on the ways how food is talked about, and how these talks are linked to nations. I argue that on the Internet of and about Central Asia the food and cuisine have been directly connected to ideas of nation being brought to its centralities at the national food contests. Within the virtual touches to the known dishes people may now associate or dissociate themselves to nations beyond the necessity of contact: imagination became not only visually available but also has become simultaneously shareable within the globe. The argument is built within the survey into the Soviet construction of the notion of 'national cuisine', an overview of the discourses on the Internet, and on the national contests inscribing the two dishes to 'own' nations at the level of the Guinness World Records and the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists. I finally argue, with the inclusion of their 'national dishes' onto the global stage Central Asia has officially inserted itself into the global 'contest of sameness and difference' (Appadurai 1990).