Toward a Gastronomic Criticism. From Good Taste to Haptic Taste

transcript Verlag eBooks, 2023

In this essay, I propose a different approach to gastronomic criticism through a new theory of taste, that is, an unconventional model of gustatory perception. I show that what is usually understood today as 'food criticism' is a distortion of it in terms of a mere exercise in reviews and ratings. This distortion is linked to a corresponding conception of the gustatory experience, where mainly, if not exclusively, sensible aspects referring to an objective and static conception of food are taken into account. This objective and static conception is consistent with and supportive of the contemporary domain of visual food images, understood as immediate outputs of the gastronomic reality. As an alternative, I propose a haptic taste, that is, engaged and involved, processual and multisensory, as a model for a new kind of gastronomic criticism. Haptic taste can contribute to the creation of a contemporary gastronomic critique that, consciously reaping the increasing power that visual images have in the digital age, deconstructs them by arranging them along planes where they are experienced and questioned.

TASTE, 2018

BRILL, 2023

When does eating become art? The Aesthetics of Taste answers this question by exploring the position of taste in contemporary culture and the manner in which taste meanders its way into the realm of art. The argument identifies aesthetic values not only in artistic practices, where they are naturally expected, but also in the spaces of everydayness that seem far removed from the domain of fine arts. As such, it seeks to grasp what artists – who offer aesthetic as well as culinary experiences – actually try to communicate, while also pondering whether a cook can be an artist

The central idea behind this book is deceptively simple: that our perception of flavour is multisensory. Consequently, to serve up great tasting food is not simply a matter of tickling the taste buds but of engaging a whole range of sensory experiences. Drawing on recent innovative research carried out by Spence's team at the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at Oxford University, the authors argue that we must go beyond four or five individual taste sensations (which respond to particular sensory nodes on the tongue) to focus on the interaction of multisensory experiences as it is here that flavour emerges. They show how a host of sensory elements ranging from the colour of the plate to the frequency of concurrent sounds all affect the ways we perceive flavour. Spence and his team have published prolifically on the topic, and 'The Perfect Meal' is evidence of a wider aim to encourage those in the food industry to think about eating as a multisensory experience and therefore allow professionals to better deliver positive results to diners and consumers. Rather than looking at food itself the focus is on the particular performance of fine dining, shrouded in the mystery and spectacle that comes along with the molecular gastronomy oeuvre made famous by Heston Blumenthal or restaurants such as El Bulli. By engaging directly with this trend the authors 'hope that chefs would want to find out more about how changing the aroma of a food (by adding the aroma of strawberry or vanilla, say) can change its perceived sweetness and how changing the colour of a food or beverages can send a very powerful signal to the diner's brain about the likely taste and flavour they are about to experience' (p. 22). Affiliating themselves with the recent term 'gastrophysics', this new, high-tech 'science of the table' uses 'well controlled experiments' to 'investigate the way in which people… respond to sensory stimuli' (p. 18) The physical responses that taste experiences elicit in us offer a potentially powerful tool in the context of the food industry by offering the scope to manipulate our experiences of food in much more precise and fundamental ways. Throughout the book the authors methodically build a case for the inclusion of a number of elements in the multisensory perception of taste. In Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5, they elaborate the role that different devices employed in restaurants can play in enhancing a meal. Addressing in turn the start of the meal (the menu, setting of the tables, waiters, etc.), the language and labelling used on the menu, the plate itself and the cutlery, these chapters summarize the latest research to show how these various elements affect the way we perceive flavour. A prominent example from the authors' own research is the finding that a dessert on a round white plate tasted up

The Monist, 2018

In this essay I propose a new theory of taste, starting from the assumption of the multisensorial and ecological approach to the senses, as proposed by Gibson in his psychology of perception and by Dewey in his philosophy and aesthetics. In contrast with an optical approach to tastes and tasting, here I propose the concept of haptic taste to describe a perceptual engagement deeply involved in the processes of experiencing food and beverages, although my examples are mostly related to wine. Finally I spell out the implications of a theory of haptic taste for the way we approach cultivation of taste and expertise. I suggest we should turn from the idea of 'good taste' as the result of trained and acquired skills to taste as a task, to mean the practical and continuous attuning with the environment we actively contribute to shape. I believe it is appropriate today to move from a culture of taste, based on an elevation strategy, to a culture with taste, which emphasizes educated nurture.

2011

This thesis explores the ways in which taste is mobilized as a sensory, cultural, and political force in contemporary Western societies. My explorations derive from a context in which there is a growing dissatisfaction with the quality of food and this is seen as severely impacting upon social and cultural structures and institutions and as altering people’s health, habits and ways of life. This thesis investigates in what way taste and people’s sensuous engagement with food offers insight into the nature of relations between people, food, and environs. It further examines how such relations tackle the transmogrification of food and the systems supporting it, how these surpass dichotomous views of fast and slow food, and how these redefine essential dimensions of what it is that constitutes food and eating. I show that taste, rather than being a static attribute which determines people’s choices and status, is an active process of exploring, learning, and knowing. The analysis of re...

Normally, the gustatory sense is not supposed to carry an aesthetic experience, but it has really too deep and endurable a relationship with the so-called aesthetic judgment to be kept away from the theoretical horizon of aesthetics. Taste, a famous traditional aesthetic term, shows the evidence that at the very beginning the gustatory experience has not been separated from aesthetic experiences so clearly as nowadays. From Baumgarten's scientia cognitionis sensitivae, the gustatory sense is not excluded. David Hume even quoted the example of gustatory experience to argue for the standard of taste. Gustatory experiences share with aesthetic experiences many features such as sensation, subjectivity, relativity and individuality, so that it has reason to be elected into the domain of aesthetics. Nevertheless, people discover gaps between gustatory taste and aesthetic taste according to the principles of disinterestedness, spirituality, generally validity and comprehensiveness. Aesthetic taste seems to be superior to gustatory taste and applies only to visual and acoustic senses. This kind of division, which originates from Plato and has been developed by Kant and Hegel, has been accepted in aesthetics for a long time. However, if we check the gaps carefully, we will find that there are also possibilities for gustatory experience to be disinterested, spiritual, and widely applicable. When the appetite is well satisfied, one can taste the food in a disinterested way and make a fair judgment. The diversity of cooking the same foodstuffs in different cultures shows that gustatory taste is something more than pure physical need; it can also reflect cultural and spiritual contents. Although the old axiom says that it is fruitless to dispute concerning taste, it is still possible for us to communicate and share gustatory experiences with each other since we share the same organs. Therefore, gustatory judgment can also transcend personal preferences and obtain a wide validity. We have good reasons to expect to have aesthetic experience through gustatory sense. It is also reasonable to foresee a new form of art that appeals to gustatory sense.

An increasing attention to and interest in food, cooking and eating are hallmarks of contemporary culture. Cooking shows keep proliferating in the media, social movements focused on healthy nutrition are mushrooming and becoming ever more influential, and the culinary blogosphere and food tourism are thriving. Food and eating prove also inspiring to many contemporary artists, who not only view them as relevant subjects but also - more importantly perhaps - use food products as materials for their art. Can we food and cooking, without hesitation, call art? This question will be answered by the participants of Perspectives on Food Aesthetics conference. The special guest of the conference is prof. Richard Shusterman, who will give a keynote speech titled Somaesthetics and the Fine Art of Eating.

After Taste. Critique of Insufficient Reason, 2021

This is the Preface and Introduction of the work After Taste : Critique of Insufficient Reason by Slavko Kacunko (2021, 1380 pages in 3 volumes, ISBN 978-3-8325-5352-4) AFTER TASTE is an exploration of the foundations and limits, structures and histories as well as the actuality and popularity of Taste. Taste has always been a category outreaching aesthetics, which once seemed obsolete, but lives on because the moment to realize it was missed. AFTER TASTE addresses a number of research desiderata growing alongside the swelling corpus of literature and the public discourse, such as (1) “Taste taboo” in the current theory, (2) the matter of being “like-minded” in the exclusive academic and popular chatrooms, (3) the explosion of literature concerning matters of “personal Taste” and “evaluative domain”, (4) the contemporary structures of humanistic disciplines and (5) the corresponding phenomena faced by “generation Like”. AFTER TASTE is a comprehensive companion for readers of humanities approaching the concept of Taste for the first time. Moreover, it is intended for anyone who hopes to make a further contribution to the subject. The first volume covers a systematic perspective serving to explore Taste’s trajectories between thinking, perceiving and judging. It deals with their relationships and questions. Taste as a key factor for understanding of human faculties, value theories and valuating practices. The general question asked here is “why must we give reasons for matters of Taste?” The second volume explores the instrumentality of the concept of Taste for the production, reception and distribution aspects of knowledge and culture throughout the eighteenth century and until the present time. The question asked here is “how was Taste’s genealogy affected through major (inter-) cultural contexts?” The third volume covers the sociocultural and political-economical perspective – the “popular” and “commonsensical” aspects of Taste. A central question asked here is “which functions took Taste to inform the central humanistic disciplines and the popular discourse?”

Flavour, 2015

This article outlines what it means to see taste as a social sense, that means as an activity related to socio-cultural context, rather than as an individual matter of internal reflection. Though culture in the science of taste is recognized as an influential parameter, it is often mentioned as the black box, leaving it open to determine exactly how culture impacts taste, and vice versa, and often representing the taster as a passive recipient of multiple factors related to the local cuisine and culinary traditions. By moving the attention from taste as a physiological stimulus-response of individuals to tasting as a shared cultural activity, it is possible to recognize the taster as a reflexive actor that communicates, performs, manipulates, senses, changes and embodies taste-rather than passively perceives a certain experience of food. The paper unfolds this anthropological approach to taste and outlines some of its methodological implications: to map different strategies of sharing the experience of eating, and to pay attention to the context of these tasting practices. It is proposed that different taste activities can be analysed through the same theoretical lens, namely as sharing practices that generates and maintains a cultural understanding of the meaning of taste.