6533b822fe1ef96bd127c926

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Physiology of taste and gourmet body. A sensitive approach to figurative traces

subject

description

To be at the table is to enter into a specular device, to see, to be seen, to see oneself in the eyes of others, to move in a frame, to be taken also in this frame. Field of vision, field of exposure, the table or rather the convivial scene, accumulate the features and traces of the greedy ethos, of dishes in words s, of moments in palpable emotions. A theater rich in flavors as a pretext or predisposition to multiple sensitive manifestations, in the order of social, sensual, symbolic, spiritual. In his Physiology of Taste (1825), Brillat-Savarin gives himself such an open field of vision that he quickly goes beyond the framework of sensation and taste perception to "attack" (BARTHES, 1975) taste, gluttony, the pleasure of the table under the traits of sensitivity, conviviality, and spirit that contribute to the intellectualization of gastronomy. To consider the gourmet scene, in its unity and complexity, beyond the sensation of taste itself, Brillat-Savarin composes a living painting whose first virtue is to convert the internal movements of proprioceptivity, of a sensory nature, into figurative space, of a semiotic nature, taken in a field of social visibility. So many signs manifest themselves, taken in table interactions, that it immediately brings us back to "the absolute necessity of relating the context of the production of the trace, that of its reception and interpretation" (GALINON-MÉLÉNEC, 2015, p. 18).