Synonyms
Introduction
Taste and distaste are influential constituents of our relations with food. This essay describes their nature and interconnections and highlights their links with disgust. Reviewing difficulties that arise for the notion of taste (and hence for that of distaste, which has received far less attention), the article turns to literary and philosophical investigations of material life to suggest alternative ways of comprehending taste, distaste, and their bonds with food.
Theories of taste lie at the heart of the notion of the aesthetic in Western philosophy. Traditionally, such views evince an ambivalent stance toward food, one that deploys gustatory taste as a model for...
References
Ahmed, S. (2004). The cultural politics of emotion. New York: Routledge.
Bennett, J. (2007). Edible matter. New Left Review, 45, 133–145.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (R. Nice, Trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Braidotti, R. (2002). Metamorphoses: Towards a materialist theory of becoming. Cambridge: Polity.
Heldke, L. M. (2003). Exotic appetites: Ruminations of a food adventurer. New York: Routledge.
Heldke, L. (2011). The (extensive) pleasures of eating. In J. Strong (Ed.), Educated tastes: Food, drink, and connoisseur culture (pp. 121–157). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Heldke, L. (2012a). Down-home global cooking: A third option between cosmopolitanism and localism. In D. Kaplan (Ed.), The philosophy of food (pp. 33–51). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Heldke, L. (2012b). Community gardeners or radical homemakers? In M. Hamington & C. Bardwell-Jones (Eds.), Contemporary feminist pragmatism (pp. 128–142). New York: Routledge.
Highmore, B. (2010). Bitter after taste: Affect, food, and social aesthetics. In M. Gregg & G. J. Seigworth (Eds.), The affect theory reader (pp. 118–137). Durham: Duke University Press.
Hooks, B. (1992). Eating the other: Desire and resistance. In Black looks: Race and representation. Boston: South End.
Hume, D. (1998). In S. Copley & A. Edgar (Eds.), Selected essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jones, M. O. (2000). What’s disgusting, why, and what does it matter? Journal of Folklore Research, 37(1), 53–71.
Kafka, F. (1915/2003). The Metamorphosis (I. Johnston, Trans.). At The Kafka Project. www.kafka.org/index.php?aid=170. Accessed 22 July 2012.
Kant, I. (1951). Critique of Judgment (J. H. Bernard, Trans.). New York: Macmillan.
Korsmeyer, C. (1998). Perceptions, pleasures, arts: Considering aesthetics. In J. A. Kourany (Ed.), Philosophy in a feminist voice: Critiques and reconstructions. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Korsmeyer, C. (1999). Making sense of taste: Food and philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Korsmeyer, C. (2011). Savoring disgust: The foul and the fair in aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lispector, C. (1964/1988). The Passion According to G.H (R. W. Sousa, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Nussbaum, M. C. (2004). Hiding from humanity: Disgust, shame, and the law. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Probyn, E. (2012). In the interests of taste and place: economies of attachment. In G. Pratt & V. Rosner (Eds.), The global and the intimate: Feminism in our time (pp. 57–84). New York: Columbia University Press.
Roelofs, M. (2014). The cultural promise of the aesthetic. London: Bloomsbury.
Shusterman, R. (1993). Of the scandal of taste: Social privilege as nature in the aesthetic theories of Hume and Kant. In P. Mattick (Ed.), Eighteenth-century aesthetics and the reconstruction of art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this entry
Cite this entry
Roelofs, M. (2013). Taste, Distaste, and Food. In: Thompson, P., Kaplan, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_22-2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_22-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6167-4
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities