The Aesthetics of Taste: Eating within the Realm of Art

Dorota Koczanowicz is Professor and Head of Cultural Studies at the University of Wroclaw. She has published widely on aesthetics, gender, contemporary art, and culinary culture, including books and articles in Performance Research, Pragmatism Today, and The Monist.

List of Figures


Introduction


1 The Antinomies of Taste

 1 The Judgments of Taste: David Hume


 2 Beauty: between the Subjective and the Universally Accepted


 3 Eat/Know: Kant and Brillat-Savarin


 4 Aesthetic Taste and Physiological Taste


 5 The Nature of Physiological Taste


 6 Eating as a Social Activity


 7 Appetite, Reason, and Health


 8 Sociability




2 Taste and Its Value: Cultural Hierarchies

 1 Foods and Cooking Techniques


 2 Popular and Erudite Cuisines


 3 The Senses


 4 The Senses and Gender


 5 Towards Integration


 6 Art and Life




3 Culinary Experience: a Pragmatist Perspective

 1 Teaching by Cooking


 2 The Rhythms of Life and Art


 3 The Experience of Art


 4 Educating Taste


 5 An Experience


 6 A Culinary Experience


 7 Characteristics of Experience


 8 Food as Art




4 Somaesthetics and the Art of Eating

 1 Ambitions and Temptations


 2 Somaesthetics as an Art of Living


 3 The Art of Eating


 4 Body Memory




5 The Kitchen: a World Next Door

 1 The Female Cook


 2 Martha Rosler: the Kitchen as the Prison of the Soul


 3 Elżbieta Jabłońska: the Impossible Kitchen


 4 Mierle Laderman Ukeles: the Art of Everyday Maintenance


 5 Marina Abramović: the Holy Cook


 6 The Women’s Place


 7 The Laboratory


 8 From Oppression to Terror: the Gastronomical Mother


 9 Coda




6 Community around the Table

 1 Conversations at the Table


 2 Taste and Difference


 3 Community in the Making


 4 Impossible Community


 5 Designing Community


 6 Bridging the Gaps




7 The Taste of Authenticity

 1 Out of the Comfort Zone


 2 Food Tourism


 3 Authenticity as a Commodity


 4 Immersion


 5 Returning Home


 6 Appropriation


 7 Avoiding Authenticity




8 Leftovers

 1 Débris of the Meal


 2 Tensions


 3 Zoe en Stasei


 4 Commentary on Life


 5 The Restaurant


 6 Consummation




9 Conclusion

 1 The Diffusion of Beauty


 2 The New Sensorium




Bibliography


Index