preview

Analyzing The Essay 'The Nourishing Arts'

Decent Essays

2. "The Nourishing Arts" 1. Describe some particular detail about this essay that spoke to you. Use a quote from the text, cite it, and describe an experience of your own that made you choose it. “Like all human action, these female tasks are a product of a cultural order: from one society to another, their internal hierarchy and processes differ; from one generation to the next in the same society, and from one social class to another, the techniques that preside over these tasks, like rules of action and models for behavior that touch on them, are transformed. In a sense, each operator can create her own style according to how she accents a certain element of a practice, how she applies herself to one or another, how she creates her personal …show more content…

Especially interesting to me is how Giard describes her embodied memories, of hearing the sounds of cooking, watching the creative performances of the women doing tasks they have ritualized. What kinds of memories can you recall that you would consider ‘embodied’? How does your observation of your own experience of ‘embodied memory’ help to increase your understanding of the mechanisms of cultural transmission? Whenever my mother or grandmother cooks, they always know the right amount of seasonings or ingredients to add to a dish without measuring it. For the life of me, I could not understand how they could do that and the food would always come out perfect. It reminded me of my great-grandmother and she would do the exact same thing. When I first started cooking, I would always measure every ingredient to make sure it was right. After years of cooking, I starting to see that I’m doing the same thing my mother and grandmother are doing. I asked them how they knew how much of an ingredient to add and they told me “after a while, cooking becomes second nature to you and by sight, smell, and taste you know how much of what ingredients you need. Plus, you normally don’t have much time to measure anything

Get Access