Savage Barbecue: Race, Culture, and the Invention of America's First Food (review)

A P R I L 2 0 1 0 155 Similarly, a separate volume titled Environment presumably documents the effects of the South’s agriculture and industry on the natural world, but in this volume those consequences are essentially tangential, and often ignored altogether—despite entries on Agribusiness, Insects and Insecticides, and the Timber Industry. The editors of the volume cannot be blamed for the disjointed nature of the series, but surely the word pollution ought to appear in the index of a volume about the South’s economic engines. Inevitably, there are minor factual errors and debatable points presented incontrovertibly. But these are picayune objections, and to focus on them would obscure the fact that this volume is remarkably well done, a worthwhile endeavor deserving of the praise it is certain to elicit. MARK D. HERSEY Mississippi State University Savage Barbecue: Race, Culture, and the Invention of America’s First Food. By Andrew Warnes. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008. xii, 206 pp. $59.95 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-8203-2896-6. $19.95 (paper). ISBN 978-08203 -3109-6. Andrew Warnes’s Savage Barbecue is an interesting, yet occasionally problematic, study of the origins and representations of barbecue in English and American culture. Rather than focusing on indigenous barbecue practices in the western hemisphere, Warnes argues that the meaning of barbecue arose from “a European gaze that wanted to associate those practices with preexisting ideas of savagery and innocence” (p. 3). Essentially, Europeans viewed indigenous traditions of smoking meat as inherently barbaric and uncivilized; depictions of such savagery, including cannibalism, characterized early accounts of New World barbecue in London, reinforced ideas of western superiority and mastery over Amerindians, justified violence against indigenous peoples, and underlay colonization. The savagery of European imperialism was thus transposed onto indigenous people via representations of native barbecue . In the United States, “savage barbecue” became “pit barbecue,” a less violent though equally invented tradition that allowed white men both to separate themselves from racial Others and safely step outside the bounds of civilized culture to experience a controlled savagery. Chapters one and two deal with the etymology and representation of barbecue from the time of Columbus to eighteenth-century London. “Barbacoa,” a term indigenous to the Caribbean, originally referred to T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 156 the cooking apparatus, which could also function as a container for firewood or even a bed. Over time, barbacoa and related terms came to signify the savagery of the New World and to flatten America’s inhabitants into a ubiquitous, uncivilized racial Other. Using mostly novels and plays, Warnes convincingly argues that barbecue became linked to the rise of racial consciousness in England and helped create a singular notion of whiteness that bridged class and religious divisions. Chapters three and four focus on barbecue culture in the United States from the days of the early Republic to the mid-twentieth century. While Warnes demonstrates that American barbecue has always been linked to racial hierarchies and notions of frontier savagery, he is unable to remove himself from the binary of civilized/savage in dealing with the United States. Certainly, Americans crafted an identity that was somewhere between the overcivilized Europeans and the savage Others. Barbecue in America reflects this liminal space as much or more so than perceived savagery. From the beginning it is evident that Warnes encourages the reader to join him in some postmodern speculation. He writes that barbecue “will only give up its historical secrets if we are prepared to read adventurously , and between the lines of the colonial and Republican archives” (p. 6). This method allows him much freedom, which has both positive and negative effects. His primary form of analysis is close readings of barbecue-related materials, from such authors as Zora Neale Hurston and Ned Ward to such politicians as Andrew Jackson. Warnes even goes so far as to do a reading of napkins at barbecue joints, arguing that their unpretentious placement undermines yet reinforces the mores of haute cuisine (could they just be inexpensive?). Although I agree with much of Warnes’s analysis (the section on Theodor de Bry...