Abstract:
Taste has a history, or rather many – personal, embodied histories as well as philosophical and colonial histories. A new understanding of taste emerged in the aesthetics of the enlightenment, while colonialism and enslavement provided new experiences of taste and ‘having taste’. Following on from this, and with a glance to the euro-american story of cocoa, we might think of a need to not only “decolonize the mind” (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o) but also the senses. With the help of the queerfeminist concept of “Feel Tanks” and current theories of collectivity, taste, and affect, the presentation discusses the idea of “Taste Tanks” for a disruption of the sensible.