Pedagogy of the kermess: occupying the kitchen to reinvent the reproductive world

Abstract

This article is about cooking and food preparation as space and pedagogical moments. The goal is to reflect on the domestic area, the city, and the relations of production and consumption of food and its relations with urban life. The aim is to recover the kitchen as a celebratory area through popular knowledge and traditions. For example, at popular kermess and parties, the food, the moments, and areas for its preparation are essential; therefore, we see those events as places that subvert the hegemonic domestic organization (the kitchen considered feminine and private). They rehearse the public dimension of kitchens by placing the reproduction of bodies at the center of social life. The concept of “cross,” developed by Luiz Antonio Simas and Luiz Rufino, is key to building a reflection that mixes formal, technical, and academic knowledge with the experiences and knowledge of “informal culture.” From broader readings, we understand reproductive work as a collective construction and the kitchen as a place for exchanging and forming a shared territory between sacred and profane, necessary and celebratory borders.