Journal article
On Granite Countertops and Wolf Ovens: An Essay on Taste
Southwest review, Vol.100(1)
01 Jan 2015
Abstract
Cohen talks about taste. Among other things, in the late 19th-century, taste became associated with the artistic sensibility. Henry James, the most subtle exponent of this view, associated good taste with the ability to discriminate on all levels -- which effectively connected esthetic and moral excellence -- a return, as it were, to the classical equation of beauty and truth. The 12-century French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu also retooled classical ideas in his theory of taste. Like Marx and Veblen, Bourdieu argued that taste was an expression of social class, but he linked class to education, and, in a manner that at once seemed to support a fundamental distinction in quality and to undermine it, conceived of good taste as a byproduct of privilege: the "pure gaze" of the educated judge contrasted with the "barbaric gaze" of the common, uneducated one.
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Details
- Title
- On Granite Countertops and Wolf Ovens: An Essay on Taste
- Creators
- Paula Cohen
- Publication Details
- Southwest review, Vol.100(1)
- Publisher
- Southwest Review
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Pennoni Honors College
- Identifiers
- 991020836221604721