The Coloniality of Modern Taste

Description

This book analyzes the coloniality of the concept of taste that gastronomy constructed and normalized as modern. It shows how gastronomy’s engagement with rationalist and aesthetic thought, and with colonial and capitalist structures, led to the desensualization, bureaucratization and racialization of its conceptualization of taste. The Coloniality of Modern Taste provides an understanding of gastronomy that moves away from the usual celebratory approach. Through a discussion of nineteenth-century gastronomic publications, this book illustrates how the gastronomic notion of taste was shaped by a number of specifically modern constraints. It compares the gastronomic approach to taste to conceptualizations of taste that emerged in other geographical and philosophical contexts to illustrate that the gastronomic approach stands out as particularly bereft of affect. The book argues that the understanding of taste constructed by gastronomic texts continues to burden the affective experience of taste, while encouraging patterns of food consumption that rely on an exploitative and unsustainable global food system. This book will appeal to students and scholars interested in cultural studies, decoloniality, affect theory, sensory studies, gastronomy and food studies. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: What Is Gastronomy? The Myth of the Liberation of Taste The Problem with Gastronomy Notes References Chapter 1: The Narrative of Gastronomic Progress Eurocentric Voice and Perspective Conflation of Space and Time Western Protagonism A Borgesian Parody Notes References Chapter 2: Desensualizing Taste The Gastronomic Compromise Scientia Gastronomica, Not Ars Sensualis Humor and the Discomfort with the Gastronomic Compromise Notes References Chapter 3: Bureaucratizing Taste Print as a Technology of Taste Standardizing Cooking Standardizing Eating Notes References Chapter 4: Racializing Taste The Disavowal of Spices The Containment of Spices The Racialization of Gustatory Differences Authenticity and the Surveillance of the Racialized Gustatory Order Notes References Chapter 5: Taste, Otherwise Taste in Classical Arabic Thought Taste in Chinese thought Taste in Indic Thought Taste in Nahua Thought Taste in Yorùbá Thought Notes References Conclusion: The Gustatory Logic of Consumer Capitalism The Coloniality of Taste Desensualization Bureaucratization Racialization Decolonial Taste Yearnings Notes References Index