The Racial Imaginary of the Cold War Kitchen

This book demonstrates the ways in which the kitchenthe centerpiece of domesticity and consumerismwas deployed as a recurring motif in the ideological and propaganda battles of the Cold War. Beginning with the famous NixonKhrushchev kitchen debate, Baldwin shows how Nixon turned the kitchen into a space of exception, while contemporary writers, artists, and activists depicted it as a site of cultural resistance. Focusing on a wide variety of literature and media from the United States and the Soviet Union, Baldwin reveals how the binary logic at work in Nixon's discoursesetting U.S. freedom against Soviet totalitarianismerased the histories of slavery, gender subordination, colonialism, and racial genocide. The Racial Imaginary of the Cold War Kitchen treats the kitchen as symptomatic of these erasures, connecting issues of race, gender, and social difference across national boundaries. This rich and rewarding studyembracing the literature, film, and photography of the erawill appeal to a broad spectrum of scholars.

Dettagli