Food: Ordinary Practice or Extraordinary Experience?

Abstract

Food and the practice of cooking hold a privileged place in contemporary aesthetics, as attested by the extensive literature that has been devoted to this topic. Food has been addressed in both Anglo-American and European studies from multiple points of view, including a cognitivist, pragmatist, phenomenological, everyday and somaesthetic perspective. In this essay I will try to identify a path that allows us to hold together these readings through the ordinary-extraordinary dichotomy. First, I shall analyze food through the lens of the extraordinary, taking into consideration some examples in which food is presented as a true work of art in museums or as an exceptional experience in increasingly aestheticized daily life. Then, using the key of the ordinary, I will consider food preparation and consumption as routine practices. Finally, I will make an attempt to reconcile the two categories by identifying the moments in which the extraordinary manifests itself in everyday