Cultural Translations: A Global history of the chili pepper in Architecture

Abstract

The chili pepper came to occupy global cuisine in variegated ways through performative negotiations of cultural differences. From the Inca royal garden, Moyas, a locus of power where doves feed on chilies to the swidden farms of the Carribean in which the chili grows wild; from the formalized pleasure gardens where it sits among cyclamens and tulips in Europe at the dawn of early modernity to the battle fields of Hungary-Ottoman frontier; from colonial plantations of the Portuguese bordering the Indian west coast to the royal miniature paintings of the Mughal court; from the domestic gardens of the poor to the banqueting spectacles of the British colonists; through space and time, the chili pepper is betwixt and between: history and folklore, human and non-human, the colonized and the colonizer. This thesis unfolds this global history of architecture as activated through continuous cultural translations of the chili pepper across discontinuous geographies. In the process this thesis suggests of the tacit ways in which food and architecture materialize each other.