The Power of Taste

The art of eating and drinking re­mains one of the few areas in which the working classes explicitly chal­lenge the legitimate art of living. In the face of the new ethic of sobriety for the sake of slimness, which is most recognized at the highest levels of the social hierarchy, peasants and espe­cially industrial workers maintain an ethic of convivial indulgence. A bon vivant is not just someone who enjoys eating and drinking; he is someone capable of entering into the generous and familiar—that is, both simple and free—relationship that is encouraged and symbolized by eating and drink­ing together, in a conviviality which sweeps away restraints and reticence. 

Eating habits, especially when rep­resented solely by the produce con­sumed, cannot of course be considered independently of the whole life-style. The most obvious reason for this is that the taste for particular dishes (of which the statistical shopping-basket gives only the vaguest idea) is associ­ated, through preparation and cook­ing, with a whole conception of the domestic economy and of the division of labour between the sexes. A taste for elaborate casserole dishes (pot-au­-feu, blanquette, daube), which de­mand a big investment of time and in­terest, is linked to a traditional con­ception of woman’s role. Thus there is a particularly strong opposition in this respect between the working classes and the dominant class, in which the women, whose labour has a high mar­ket value (and who, perhaps as a re­sult, have a higher sense of their own value) tend to devote their spare time rather to child care and the transmis­sion of cultural capital, and to contest the traditional division of domestic labour. The aim of saving time and labour in preparation combines with the search for light, low-calorie prod­ucts, and points towards grilled meat and fish, raw vegetables (‘salades composes’), frozen foods, yogurt and other milk products, all of which are diametrically opposed to popular dishes, the most typical of which is pot-au-feu, made with cheap meat that is boiled (as opposed to grilled or roasted), a method of cooking that chiefly demands time. It is no accident that this form of cooking symbolizes one state of female existence and of the sexual division of labour (a woman entirely devoted to housework is called ‘pot-au-feu’), just as the slip­pers put on before dinner symbolize the complementary male role. 

Tastes in food also depend on the idea each class has of the body and of the effects of food on the body, that is, on its strength, health and beauty; and on the categories it uses to evalu­ate these effects, some of which may be important for one class and ig­nored by another, and which the dif­ferent classes may rank in very differ­ent ways. Thus, whereas the working classes are more attentive to the strength of the (male) body than its shape, and tend to go for products that are both cheap and nutritious, the professions prefer products that are tasty, health-giving, light and not fat­tening. Taste, a class culture turned in­to nature, that is, embodied, helps to shape the class body. It is an incorpo­rated principle of classification which governs all forms of incorporation, choosing and modifying everything that the body ingests and digests and assimilates, physiologically and psy­chologically. 

It follows that the body is the most indisputable materialization of class taste, which it manifests in several ways. It does this first in the seemingly most natural features of the body, the dimensions (volume, height, weight) and shapes (round or square, stiff or supple, straight or curved) of its visible forms, which express in count­less ways a whole relation to the body, i.e., a way of treating it, caring for it, feeding it, maintaining it, which re­veals the deepest dispositions of the habitus. It is in fact through prefer­ences with regard to food which may be perpetuated beyond their social conditions of production (as, in other areas, an accent, a walk, etc.), and also, of course, through the uses of the body in work and leisure which are bound up with them, that the class distribution of bodily properties is de­termined. 

At a deeper level, the whole body schema, in particular the physical approach to the act of eating, governs the selection of certain foods. For ex­ample, in the working classes, fish tends to be regarded as an unsuitable food for men, not only because it is a light food, insufficiently ‘filling’, which would only be cooked for health reasons, i.e., for invalids and children, but also because, like fruit (except bananas) it is one of the ‘fid­dly’ things which a man’s hands can­not cope with and which make him childlike (the woman, adopting a maternal role, as in all similar cases, will prepare the fish on the plate or peel the pear); but above all, it is be­cause fish has to be eaten in a way which totally contradicts the mascu­line way of eating, that is, with re­straint, in small mouthfuls, chewed gently, with the front of the mouth, on the tips of the teeth (because of the bones). 

This opposition can be found in each of the uses of the body, especially in the most insignificant-looking ones, which, as such, are predisposed to serve as ‘memory joggers’ charged with the group’s deepest values, its most fundamental ‘beliefs’. It would be easy to show, for example, that Kleenex tissues, which have to be used delicately, with a little sniff from the tip of the nose, are to the big cotton handkerchief, which is blown into sharply and loudly, with the eyes closed and the nose held tightly, as repressed laughter is to a belly laugh, with wrinkled nose, wide-open mouth and deep breathing (‘doubled up with laughter’), as if to amplify to the ut­most an experience which will not suf­fer containment, not least because it has to be shared, and therefore clearly manifested· for the benefit of others. 

And the practical philosophy of the male body as a sort of power, big and strong, with enormous, imperative, brutal needs, which is asserted in every male posture, especially when eating, is also the principle of the divi­sion of foods between the sexes, a di­vision which both sexes recognize in their practices and their language. It behooves a man to drink and eat more, and to eat and drink stronger things. Thus, men will have two rounds of aperitifs (more on special occasions), big ones in big glasses (the success of Ricard or Pernod is no doubt partly due to its being a drink both strong and copious—not a dainty ‘thimbleful’), and they leave the tit­bits (savoury biscuits, peanuts) to the children and the women, who have a small measure (not enough to ‘get tipsy’) of homemade aperitif (for which they swap recipes). 

Strictly biological differences are underlined and symbolically accentu­ated by differences in bearing, differ­ences in gesture, posture and behav­iour which express a whole relationship to the social world. To these are added all the deliberate modifications of ap­pearance, especially by use of the set of marks—cosmetic (hairstyle, make­up, beard, moustache, whiskers, etc.) or vestimentary—which, because they depend on the economic and cultural means that can be invested in, them, function as social markers deriving their meaning and value from their position in the system of distinctive signs which they constitute and which is itself homologous with the system of social positions. The sign-bearing, sign-wearing body is also a producer of signs which are physically marked by the relationship to the body: thus the valorization of virility, expressed in a use of the mouth or a pitch of the voice, can determine the whole of working-class pronunciation. 

Plain speaking, plain eating: the working-class meal is characterized by plenty (which does not exclude restric­tions and limits) and above all by free­dom. This freedom, which may be perceived as disorder or slovenliness, is adapted to its function. Firstly, it is labour-saving, which is seen as an ad­vantage. Because men take no part in housework, not least because the women would not allow it—it would be a dishonour to see men step outside their role—every economy of effort is welcome. Thus, when the coffee is served, a single spoon may be passed around to stir it. But these short cuts are only permissible because one is and feels at home, among the family, where ceremony would be an affecta­tion. For example, to save washing up, the dessert may be handed out on improvised plates torn from the cake­box (with a joke about ‘taking the lib­erty’, to mark the transgression), and the neighbour invited in for a meal will also receive his piece of cardboard (offering a plate would exclude him) as a sign of familiarity. Similarly, the plates are not changed between dishes. The soup plate, wiped with bread, can be used right through the meal. The hostess will certainly offer to ‘change the plates’, pushing back her chair with one hand and reaching with the other for the plate next to her, but everyone will protest (‘It all gets mixed up inside you’) and if she were to insist it would look as if she wanted to show off her crockery (which she is allowed to if it is a new present) or to treat her guests as strangers, as is sometimes deliberately done to intruders or ‘scroungers’ who never return the in­vitation. These unwanted guests may be frozen out by changing their plates despite their protests, not laughing at their jokes, or scolding the children for their behaviour (‘No, no, we don’t mind’, say the guests; ‘They ought to know better by now’, the parents re­spond). The common root of all these ‘liberties’ is no doubt the sense that at least there will not be self-imposed controls, constraints and restrictions—especially not in eating, a primary need and a compensation—and espe­cially not in the heart of domestic life, the one realm of freedom, when every-where else, and at all other times neces­sity prevails.

In opposition to the free-and-easy working-class meal, the bourgeoisie is concerned to eat with all due form. Form is first of all a matter of rhythm, which implies expectations, pauses, restraints; waiting until the last person served has started to eat, taking mod­est helpings, not appearing over-eager. A strict sequence is observed and all coexistence of dishes which the se­quence separates, fish and meat, cheese and dessert, is excluded: for example, before the dessert is served, everything left on the table, even the salt-cellar, is removed, and the crumbs are swept up. This extension of rigor­ous rules into everyday life (the bour­geois male shaves and dresses first thing every morning, and not just to ‘go out’), refusing the division between home and the exterior, the quotidian and the extra-quotidian, is not ex­plained solely by the presence of strangers—servants and guests—in the familiar family world. It is the ex­pression of a habitus of order, re­straint and propriety which may not be abdicated. 

The relation to food—the primary need and pleasure—is only one dimension of the bourgeois relation to the social world. The opposition be­tween the immediate and the def erred, the easy and the difficult, substance (or function) and form, which is ex­posed in a particularly striking fash­ion in bourgeois ways of eating, is the basis of all aestheticization of practice and every aesthetic. Through all the forms and formalisms imposed on the immediate appetite, what is demanded—and inculcated—is not only a dispo­sition to discipline food consumption by a conventional structuring which is also a gentle, indirect, invisible cen­sorship ( quite different from enforced privations) and which is an element in an art of living (correct eating, for ex­ample, is a way of paying homage to one’s hosts and to the mistress of the house, a tribute to her care and effort). It is also a whole relationship to ani­mal nature, to primary needs and the populace who indulge them without restraint; it is a way of denying the meaning and primary function of con­sumption, which are essentially com­mon, by making the meal a social cer­emony, an affirmation of ethical tone and aesthetic refinement. 

The manner of presenting and con­suming the food,· the organization of the meal and setting of the places, strictly differentiated according to the sequence of dishes and arranged to please the eye, the presentation of the dishes, considered as much in terms of shape and colour (like works of art) as of their· consumable substance, the etiquette governing posture and ges­ture, ways of serving oneself and others, of using the different utensils, the seating plan, strictly but discreetly hierarchical, the censorship of all bodily manifestations of the act or pleasure of eating (such as noise or haste), the very refinement of the things consumed, with quality more important than quantity—this whole commitment to stylization tends to shift the emphasis from substance and function to form and manner, and so to deny the crudely material reality of the act of eating and of the things con­sumed, or, which amounts to the same thing, the basely material vulgarity of those who indulge in the immediate satisfactions of food and drink. 

Given the basic opposition between form and substance, one could re-gen­erate each of the oppositions between the two antagonistic approaches to t1ie treatment of food and the act of eating. In one case, food is claimed as a material reality, a nourishing sub­stance which sustains the body and gives strength (hence the emphasis on heavy, fatty, strong foods, of which the paradigm is pork—fatty and salty—the antithesis of fish—light, lean and bland); in the other, the priority given to form (the shape of the body, for example) and social form, formal­ity, puts the pursuit of strength and substance in the background and identifies true freedom with the elec­tive asceticism of a self-imposed rule. And it could be shown that two antag­onistic world views, two worlds, two representations of human excellence are contained in this matrix.

Substance—or matter—is what is substantial, not only ‘filling’ but also real, as opposed to all appearances, all the fine words and empty gestures that ‘butter no parsnips’ and are, as the phrase goes, purely symbolic; reality, as against sham, imitation, window­ dressing; the little eating-house with its marble-topped tables and paper napkins where you get an honest square meal and aren‘t ‘paying for the wallpaper’ as in fancy restaurants; be­ing, as against seeming, nature and the natural, simplicity (pot-luck, ‘take it as it comes’, ‘no standing on cere­mony’), as against embarrassment, mincing and posturing, airs and graces, which are always suspected of being a substitute for substance, i.e., for sincerity, for feeling, for what is felt and proved in actions. It is the free-speech and language of the heart which make the true ‘nice guy’, blunt, straightforward, unbending, honest, genuine, ‘straight down the line’ and ‘straight as a die’, as opposed to everything that is pure form, done only for form’s sake; it is freedom and the refusal of complications, as op­posed to respect for all the forms and formalities spontaneously perceived as instruments of distinction and power. On these moralities, these world views, there· is no neutral view­point. What for some is shameless and slovenly, for others is straightfor­ward, unpretentious. Familiarity is for some the most absolute form of recognition, the abdication of all dis­tance, a trusting openness, a relation of equal to equal; for others, who shun familiarity, it is an unseemly liberty.