Commensality and culture: a semiotic reading of Igbo tribal life in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Abstract

Food in literary production signifies the cultural and cross-cultural relations from which it is produced. The emergence of Literary Food Studies engages food as a signifier to magnify human relations and emotions. Food is a mosaic system of signs symbolising diasporic, class, caste, racial, and gender relations. The paper focuses on commensality, one of the mushrooming trends in literary food studies. Commensality is the act of eating together that helps to build relationships and create conviviality, the social pleasure among people. It helps to reinforce the identity and sense of belongingness among the community members. Drawing on the theoretical readings from Mary Douglas and Arjun Appadurai’s semiotics of food, the paper explores the possibilities of commensality in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. The paper tries to argue that, commensality and its food practices along with representing togetherness could also symbolise the complex cultural functioning of the Igbo tribal community. The ingredients of the commensality, the culinary tools, and the order of eating convey cultural meanings. It throws light into the hierarchy and various power relations existing in the community.