Toward a Philosophy Of Food History

Abstract

[The French]... talk about talking about food. Gertrude Stein There is a topology of time in regard to activities which shall briefly develop here as a context for a philosophical discussion of history of food. This should help clarify levels of meaning that are implicit in phenomena of food. The broadest distinction that can be drawn is between immediate and mediate time. Immediate time, on one hand, is present and recent past, and within this temporal category we can distinguish between consumption and preparation of food. Preparation can be further divided into regional (popular) cuisine and erudite (professional) cuisine, as Jean-Francois Revel has done in his book, Culture and Cuisine.1 These different types of cuisine can be further developed along lines of Slow Food and Fast Food where Revel's interplay between regional and erudite disappears and becomes an opposition; see Carlo Petrini's Slow Food: The case for Taste.2 Mediate time, on other hand, is connection of with remote past. (I shall mainly be preoccupied with this idea.) Several examples come to mind. First is Roland Barthes's Sugar and Other Systems in which he suggests that has a commemorative function, i.e., food permits a person (and am here speaking of French themes) to partake each day of national past.3 detail, he says, this case, historical quality is obviously linked to techniques (preparation and cooking). These have long roots, reaching back to depth of French past. They are, we are told, repository of a whole experience, of accumulated wisdom of our ancestors. ... No doubt myth of French cooking abroad (or as expressed to foreigners) strengthens this nostalgic value of considerably; but since French themselves actively participate in this myth (especially when traveling), it is fair to say that through his Frenchman experiences a certain national continuity. By way of a thousand detours, permits him to insert himself daily into his own past and to believe in a certain culinary of France (87). A good fictional illustration of this point is in Willa Gather's novel, Death Comes for Archbishop, in which a conversation about a dark onion soup ensues: Think of it, Blanchet; in all this vast country between Mississippi and Pacific Ocean, there is probably not another human being who could make a soup like this. Not unless he is a Frenchman, said Father Joseph. He had tucked a napkin over front of his cassock and was losing no time in reflection. I am not depreciating your individual talent. Joseph, Bishop [Latour] continued, but, when one thinks of it, a soup like this is not work of one man. It is result of a constantly refined tradition. There are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup.4 Furthermore, this continuity of culinary is a widely-shared belief among native North American tribes and communities; for instance, Jim Enote of Zuni Pueblo remarks: In essence partaking of is more than a matter of physical sustenance, it is also a personal ritual to honor long history of our people, which is a story intimate and dense with meaning.3 Food ritualizing a national or tribal history and providing a culinary continuity with past is a premise shared by several cultures. This particular function of distinguishes history of in terms of how it accesses past, and therefore, this makes discipline very interesting and at same time problematic. So history of raises some intriguing philosophical questions. For instance, philosophers of history are interested in what sort of judgments are included in a historical narrative and why. shall took at two of these here: culinary judgments and comparative judgments. Duplication Problem The major historiographical problem of history of food, as Revel sees it, is this: the difficulty when one explores past (and even present) lies in appreciating difference between silent cuisine and cuisine that talks too much, between cuisine that exists on plate and one that exists only in gastronomical chronicles. …