On the Evanescent and Reminiscent

Weiss, Brad

Publication

On the Evanescent and Reminiscent

Weiss, Brad

Abstract

In classic accounts, taste is dismissed as a “proximal sense,” too brutish to admit of refinement; and yet the term “taste” is also a synecdoche of aesthetic judgment itself. These contrasts inform this paper, which illustrates their expression in ethnographic particulars drawn from my research on pasture-raised pork in North Carolina. My intention is not to demonstrate what taste really is, but to ask how the multidimensionality of taste is realized in practice. This inquiry might further illuminate the connection between human perception and systems of value.