John Coveney , Food, Morals and Meaning, second edition

The pleasure and anxiety of eating . London: Routledge Books, 2006

Bibliographic Data

ID12947381
AuthorsFernando R Zapata (Stony Brook University, corresponding author)
Year2007
Pages197-200
Publication date2007-02-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFoucault Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1832-5203 • E-ISSN: 1832-5203
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.22439/fs.v0i4.904
OpenAlexW1929030336
LanguageEN
Citations received48

In a day when carbohydrates strike fear into people and calories are neurotically calculated, John Coveneys Food, Morals and Meaning: The pleasure and anxiety of eating surfaces as a timely and lively discussion of our difficult relationship with food and eating. 1 Likewise, it bears witness to the pragmatic power behind the ideas of Michel Foucault.Food, Morals and Meaning shows Foucaults thought constructively seeping into fields beyond philosophy: namely, into the disciplines of medical sociology and health policy (under which the book is classified).Though this observation is unsurprising when thinking about Foucault's sway in the social sciences, it is notable here because Coveney is actively applying Foucault to the pressing issues of our obsession with health and nutrition, showing him to be relevant in perhaps unforeseen ways.However, while Coveney talks to the concerns of today through Foucault, we also learn that "the science of nutrition is but a modern development in a moral history of food and eating that can be traced to earlier systems of thought in Western culture." 2 This genealogical approach is where Foucault's thought comes to weigh heavily on Coveney's project.Foucault's method (I prefer "style") reverberates throughout the work in several critical ways: Coveney discusses "the historical and cultural basis" of "the outpouring of concern and anxiety" regarding health and nutrition, and seeks to "provide an explanation of why we fear what we fear, and where in Western culture the foundations of anxiety about food originated." 3 This echoes two crucial characteristics of Foucault's "style," found in the Foucault who is the "historian of ideas," and the Foucault who is the "historian of thought." 4 Coveney assumes the persona of the "historian of ideas" when he 1

Anxiety · Meaning (existential · Pleasure · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Psychology

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