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Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I focus on food memories in the context of sociopolitical changes in Poland after 1989. Stories about tastes are used for interpretation of the past and reflect contradictory sentiments, dependent on the generational experience and attitudes to the present.

Paper long abstract:

Individual narratives about the memory of tastes from the past are always located within a wider cultural material and mental space. Although they relate to idiosyncratic bodily sensations, they are shaped by socially shared semantic frames directing attention to what is culturally significant and defining both the experience itself and the memory of it. In this paper, I would like to focus on food memories in the context of sociopolitical changes that took place in Poland after the transformation in 1989. These narratives give insight not only into the specifics of sensual experience characteristic of the previous era, but also allow to observe how remembered tastes take part in formatting the memory of the past, and become a tool for its interpretation and assessment. My analysis shows that narratives about tastes of socialism reflect contradictory sentiments, largely dependent on the generational experience of remembering individuals and their attitude to the present. In the case of the older generations, it is typically a nostalgic memory, part of the discourse of loss and criticism of modern times. Narratives of the younger generations reveal an ambivalent valuation: they are either a mythical tale of happy childhood years used for autobiographical aims, or they underestimate former eating styles, by contrasting the monotonous and "unhealthy" flavours of the past with present diversity, sophistication and distinctiveness of tastes.