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RESEARCH PRODUCT

L'imaginaire de la table

subject

description

The sharing of food takes forms as free and open as our imagination. Under the regime of commensality, this sharing is organized around a primordial place: the table. By its power to stage food, to dramatize behaviors and to amplify emotions, the table condenses, in its closed space, the whole range of human interactions. It is a theater of flavors, rich in all the traditions and all the audacity, but also a theater of values, in what the table can offer as goods and as links. Because we eat symbolic things, the meaning of food is often linked to the flavor of relationships. How can we not see the table, this symbolic place of exchange, as a metaphor of communication, if we agree on the following proposition: a communication is a relationship that takes shape. On the condition that we open the form to its different aspects: prefiguration of a practice, of a relationship; particular configuration of the commensal space; figuration of the actors within the food scene. Three main courses: inventing the table, inviting oneself to the table; the taste for sharing; the post-modern table.