Contemporary perspectives in aesthetic theory: Steven Connor, Sianne Ngai and the edible world

• Main Author: Tom Lee
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2016-07-01
• Series: Journal of Aesthetics & Culture
• Subjects: aesthetic theory; proximal senses; minor aesthetic categories; Sianne Ngai; Steven Connor; mass culture; gustatory taste; thing theory
• Online Access: http://www.aestheticsandculture.net/index.php/jac/article/view/32022/47875

This article interprets the work of cultural theorists Steven Connor and Sianne Ngai in terms of their efforts to reevaluate certain key presumptions of aesthetic theory that inherits the surprisingly resilient biases of the 18th century, in particular the work of Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke. Focusing on the work of Ngai and Connor, I think through the implications this recent theory has for the previously peripheral position occupied by gustatory taste and the cultural objects and experiences it implicates. I discuss the possibility that ideas and examples drawn from the work of Connor and Ngai might form the basis for an alternative area of analysis that is better adapted to the peculiarities of gustatory taste and the culinary. In particular, I argue that the visceral element, which tends to accompany gustatory taste, ought to be interpreted in terms of its generative contribution to the creation of concepts through metaphor, rather than as a muddying influence that prevents clarity of discrimination. Similarly, the close relationship between the edible and the domestic is deserving of a more generous reading than is commonly found in aesthetic theory underwritten by the categories of the sublime and the beautiful.