Collapse Vol. VII: Culinary Materialism

About this Volume

Collapse VII: Culinary Materialism brings together work that explores, from many different perspectives, the multifaceted question of cookery. In this volume, a range of contributors - scientists, philosophers, chefs, anthropologists, artists - explore how philosophy and proto- scientific theory and experimental practice was linked at its outset to the culinary arts; and chart the consequences of the contemporary return of cookery to scientific precision, in the rarefied world of haute cuisine as in the world of mass- manufactured confections. Along the way we discover that the question of cookery is bound up with some profound and enduring issues in the history of philosophy, and can also suggest new approaches to contemporary philosophical problems.

Contents

ROBIN MACKAY & REZA NEGARESTANI
Editorial Introduction [PDF]
IAIN HAMILTON GRANT
The Chemical Paradigm (Interview)
JOHN GERRARD & MICHAEL A. MORRIS
Corn Bomb: An Extended History of Nitrogen
FIELDCLUB
Whey To Go: On the Hominid Appropriation of the Pig-Function
RICK DOLPHIJN
The New Alimentary Continuum
MANABRATA GUHA
Vague Weaponizations, or The Chemistry of Para-Tactical Engagements
CAROL GOODDEN
FOOD and the City (Interview)
AO&
Where's the Edge of the Pot? (Interview)
JOHN COCHRAN
Object-Oriented Cookery
RICHARD WRANGHAM
Reason in the Roasting of Eggs
VANINA LESCHZINER AND ANDREW DAKIN
Theorizing Cuisine from Medieval to Modern Times: Cognitive Structures, the Biology of Taste, and Culinary Conventions
SEAN DAY
The Human Sensoria and a Synaesthetic Approach to Cooking
JEREMY MILLAR
Black Cake (A Recipe for Emily Dickinson, for Emily Dickinson)
DAN AND NANDITA MELLAMPHY
Ec[h]ologies of the Désêtre EDUARDO VIVEIROS DE CASTRO
The Metaphysics of Predation
EUGENE THACKER
Spiritual Meat: Resurrection and Religious Horror in Bataille
DOROTHÉE LEGRAND
Ex-Nihilo: Forming a Body Out of Nothing
FERNANDO ZALAMEA
Analytical Jelly and Transmodern Tatin
GABRIEL CATREN
On Philosophical Alchimery, Or Why All Chimeric Compositions are Philosophical Stones


APPENDIX OF RECIPES
Compiled by the editors