Chopstick vs fork&knife

Questo breve articolo è il risultato di alcune lezioni in una U.D. sulla cucina etnica.

Asian chopsticks and  Western cutlery 

Though chopsticks and cutlery are both utensils used to grab food, they reflect different cultural visions of nutrition. 

In the tenth chapter of his Empire of signs (1970), which describes the most relevant characteristics of Japanese culture, the French scholar Roland Barthes juxtaposes  the popular Asian eating instrument of chopsticks to the Western tools fork and knife and gives his personal interpretation of their role.

In Barthes' words, chopsticks and cutlery express contrasting anthropological approaches to food consumption, that is to say,  while Japanese chopsticks are a natural extension of the human fingers and are symbols of a non violent, non predatory attitude towards food, Western fork and knife "cut, pierce, mutilate and murder" food, pressing on it and modifying its texture. 

Chopsticks - Barthes writes - are used  with one hand just to lift the morsel (Japanese dishes are generally small bite-sized, and sushi is intended to be eaten in one bite), they transfer food to the mouth so that the contact  between the instrument and the object eaten is minimal;  our hands, instead, armed with the traditional Western tools, reshape food, transform the appearance of what we are going to eat,  in a gesture which every time asserts  the human supremacy over nature and changes the original  features of food just for the sake of wielding power. 

Even though we use cutlery  every day and many of us  are regular customers of Asian ethnic restaurants, well........... we can say that we had never, never thought about that.

a.s. 2017-18        testo della classe IV E eno, con la guida della prof.ssa R. Della Ragione