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Abstract
Food spaces have an active and evolving relationship with culture and embodied identity. In my paper, I would like to explore the relationship between food spaces and cultural identity through the lens of the following novels, SL Byrappa’s Aavarna and Perumal Murugan’s Pyre. These novels present complex issues related to culture and identity. Food spaces play a crucial role in bringing out caste and religious politics in specific regions of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu through these novels. As Roland Barthes says, “Food is not only a collection of products but a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages and behaviour.” Food spaces represent ‘polysemia’ of experiences, and evoke cultural memory, voice out various stereotypes, ideologies related to culture. Food studies in this sense provides an interdisciplinary approach to understand food as a cultural signifier.