The Coloniality of Modern Taste - A Critique of Gastronomic Thought

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.

List of contents

Introduction: What Is Gastronomy?

1. The Narrative of Gastronomic Progress

2. Desensualizing Taste

3. Bureaucratizing Taste

4. Racializing Taste
5. Taste, Otherwise

Conclusion: The Gustatory Logic of Consumer Capitalism

Product details

• Authors: Zilkia Janer, Zilkia (Hofstra University) Janer, Janer Zilkia
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.12.2022
• EAN: 9781032364179
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3236417-9
• No. of pages: 174
• Dimensions: 150 mm x 230 mm x 12 mm
• Series: Print on demand; Routledge Research on Decoloniality and New Postcolonialisms
• Subjects: Education and learning > Teaching preparation > Vocational needs; Ethnic Studies, Sociology, Popular Culture, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Human Geography, SCIENCE / Earth Sciences / Geography, Colonialism & imperialism, Food & society, Colonialism and imperialism, Human Geography, National liberation & independence, post-colonialism, Cultural studies: food and society, National liberation and independence