Overview

Uncovering the intricate cultural threads that inform our dietary practices Paranatures in Culinary Culture embarks on a gastronomic odyssey, redefining foods we thought we knew and revealing the extraordinary stories of ordinary ingredients and the cultural forces shaping our diets. The book begins with a simple premise: to eat is to assimilate the outer world into the inner body, both physically and mentally. But what happens when this assimilation process goes awry? Thomas R. Parker reveals how culinary staples are not only elements of identity formation but also instruments of cultural disruption when their true nature emerges and challenges our preconceptions. Parker explores how certain foods-bread, oysters, pigs, cheese, and wine-can both create and destabilize narratives, unsettle assimilation, and decenter Western culinary traditions. Taking inspiration from architectural historian David Gissen's concept of ""subnature"" and Michel Serres's idea of the ""parasite,"" Parker develops the concept of paranatures: flavors, foods, and practices considered unpalatable by different societies at different times. He reveals how certain ordinary foods live parallel paranatural lives, addressing larger issues of colonial and postcolonial food theory and challenging long-held notions that cuisine was meant to uphold. Serving up a rich blend of history, culture, and gastronomy, Parker leads readers to perceive food as an adventure, inviting them to taste the untamed side of nature. He offers a thought-provoking invitation to reconceptualize the roles and narratives we assign to the natural world and its produce, allowing us to see food, nature, and ourselves in new ways.

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9781517918101

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Reviews

""Paranatures in Culinary Culture makes the familiar strange, from farm to table to gullet. Analyzing the peculiarities of food and wine, Thomas R. Parker shows how their incipient vitalities shape the contours of the human and the societies we mistakenly think we control. Parker's notion of paranature alone is worth the price of admission, and his sensorial arguments and historical exemplars bring those insights to life.""—Kennan Ferguson, author of Cookbook Politics   ""This is an exciting book, and it’s vital for the field of food studies. In Thomas R. Parker’s elegant writing, the idea of paranature reshapes our understandings of how we ‘assimilate’ food through eating, disgust, digestion, and the stories we tell about food. Paranatures in Culinary Culture opens up vital conversations between food studies and architecture, aesthetics, and art.""—Daniel E. Bender, author of The Food Adventurers: How Around-the-World Travel Changed the Way We Eat  

Author Information

Thomas R. Parker is associate professor and chair of French and Francophone studies at Vassar College. He is author of Volition, Rhetoric, and Emotion in the Work of Pascal and Tasting French Terroir: The History of an Idea.

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