Simona Stano

Elemento imprescindibile della vita quotidiana, il cibo ha acquisito negli ultimi decenni una visibilità sempre maggiore nell’ambito della scena pubblica e mediatica. Ciò ha favorito lo sviluppo e il radicamento dei cosiddetti food studies, dediti all’analisi critica dei fenomeni alimentari non tanto dal punto di vista materiale comune alle più tradizionali scienze della nutrizione, quanto a livello delle pratiche sociali e culturali entro cui il cibo è inserito e investito di molteplici valori. Sebbene più tardi rispetto ad altre discipline, anche la riflessione semiotica si è fatta strada in tale dibattito: sostanze, discorsi e pratiche alimentari sono parte di un processo di trasferimento del senso, che molto può dire su chi li produce e consuma, sulle culture cui fanno riferimento, sugli ambienti in cui circolano. Questo libro propone una serie di ricerche che, intrecciando tra loro linguaggi del e sul cibo, indagano i sensi che l’alimentazione assume in diversi contesti, mettendo in evidenza il potenziale dell’approccio semiotico rispetto alla loro analisi e comprensione.

Food represents an unalienable component of everyday life, encompassing different spheres and moments. What is more, in contemporary societies, migration, travel, and communication incessantly expose local food identities to global food alterities, activating interesting processes of transformation that continuously reshape and redefine such identities and alterities. Ethnic restaurants fill up the streets we walk, while in many city markets and supermarkets local products are increasingly complemented with spices, vegetables, and other foods required for the preparation of exotic dishes. Mass and new media constantly provide exposure to previously unknown foods, while “fusion cuisines” have become increasingly popular all over the world. But what happens to food and food-related habits, practices, and meanings when they are carried from one foodsphere to another? What are the main elements involved in such dynamics? And which theoretical and methodological approaches can help in understanding such processes? These are the main issues addressed by this book, which explores both the functioning logics and the tangible effects of one of the most important characteristics of present-day societies: eating the Other.

Food is intrinsically related to ideology. This is evident since the very definition of “edibility”, with different cultures selecting, within a wide range of products with nutritional capacity, a more or less large quantity destined to become, for them, “food”. And it is further remarked by the extreme variation characterising taste and “eatability”, as well as by the broad range of possible systems of classification and categorization of food, based on the most diverse principles. Food choices and practices, in other terms, can be seen as acts of signification allowing people to establish and sustain their identities. These acts, as well as the multiple cultural representations that support and are supported by them, serve as vehicles through which ideological expectations are circulated, enforced, and transgressed. This papers deals with these crucial issues from a semiotic point of view, resulting in the identification of the main aspects that should characterise a critical approach to food and food ideologies.

Magazines, leaflets, weblogs, and a variety of other media incessantly spread messages advising us on how to achieve or maintain our health or well-being. In such messages, the iconic representation of the face is predominant, and reveals an interesting phenomenon: the “face of health” seems to be unattainable as such, and is generally represented in a differential way, that is to say, by making reference to its opposite — i.e. the “face of illness”, or at least of malaise. In fact, the face is crucial in the medical domain: since ancient times, face observation has played an essential role in diagnostic practices, both in Western medicine (which resorts to the concept of facies, intended as the distinctive facial expression or appearance associated with a specific medical condition, for the description of pathological states) and Eastern preventive and healing techniques (within which the so-called Mian Xiang, or “face reading”, is fundamental, and connects the medical sphere with other aspects such as personality, talents, and dispositions). Drawing on the semiotic analysis of relevant case studies extending from classical iconography to present-day digital mediascapes, this paper investigates the representation of the face of health (and illness) across time and space, specifically focusing on the analogies and differences between the Western and the Eastern semiosphere. To this purpose, it relies on both literature concerning the representation and understanding of the face and studies on medical sign systems and discourses.

The vegan population has risen significantly over the past decade, and is expected to continue increasing. Social media are believed to have played a major role in such a rise. According to a Google study (2018), veganism started to spread markedly in 2012, the same year Instagram became popular, and has then grown in correlation with the expansion of the social network (with over 88 million #vegan posts out of a billion monthly active users and more than 500 million people using the platform daily today). Since 2016 conversations around veganism have increased also on Twitter, reaching nearly 20 million Tweets in 2018 and registering a further growth of 70% in 2019. Moreover, the number of Google searches for veganism has spiked from a popularity rating of just 17 out of 100 in 2008 to 88 in 2018. Functioning both as platforms for sharing and commenting on information and as effective channels for proselytizing activities, these and other social media have evidently extended the boundaries of the vegan movement, making it become one of the biggest contemporary food trends. This paper aims at identifying and describing the main cultural transformations and forms of life promoted by “veganism 2.0”, based on a semiotic approach particularly attentive to the analysis of the narrative level and the patemic dimension. To this purpose, the intersections between the so-called “gastromania” and other trends characterising contemporary foodspheres, such as “gastro-anomy” and the “ideology of nutritionism” are taken into account, paying particular attention to the gastronomic discourse in present-day digital mediascapes and the complex dynamics characterising them.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had evident effects on the gastrosphere, as the lively debate on the perceptions of edibility in different cultures, as well as the development and spreading of new food practices and discourses (see in particular Marrone 2020; Niola 2020; Stano 2020), prove. As people went (back) to their kitchens and (re)discovered the magic of "grandma's recipes", also experimenting new forms of conviviality and commensality, comfort food has become the undisputed protagonist of most desks and screens. This has highlighted a new conception of temporality as related to the food realm. On the one hand, in fact, comfort food directly calls on nostalgia (as evidenced by its very definition: "Food prepared in a traditional style having a usually nostalgic or sentimental appeal"). On the other hand, such a "nostalgic appeal", and the "obsessive regret" (Greimas 1986) that it presupposes, seem to extend far beyond a "lost past" to be retrieved à la Proust, extending to the more recent, and partly still present, gastromaniac pornography (see Marrone 2014; Stano 2018), as well as to the prefiguration of a "post-gastromaniac" future (see Marrone 2019). This paper deals with this crucial issue, reflecting on the effects of meaning generated by our experience of the pandemic, with particular reference to the temporal dimension.

While food is capable of mediating between different cultures, opening kitchen systems to all sort of inventions, crosses and contaminations, it is also the space for domestication and adaptation. This has become particularly evident in contemporary glocalised foodscapes, where migratory flows, travels and the development of media systems have made the processes of translation across different food cultures
increasingly evident and consistent, affecting (much faster than in the past) the existing culinary “traditions” and becoming part of them. The distinction between the global and the local dimension has thus progressively blurred, making established meanings and identities no longer clearly defined, but rather expressed through several and multiple interpretations. It is therefore essential to understand the semiotic
processes underlying such interpretations, and the way they contribute to the definition of contemporary food meanings and identities. This paper deals with these crucial questions by focusing on some relevant case studies related to the Peruvian foodsphere, whose recent development and success on a global scale has been promoted precisely by means of an emphasised process of glocalisation operated by local food services and haute-cuisine chefs that have become famous worldwide.

Da sempre centrale nella selezione e nel consumo di cibo, la vista è arrivata a surrogare quasi comple-tamente il gusto: non ci limitiamo più semplicemente a mangiare il cibo, ma soprattutto lo rappresen-tiamo, lo immaginiamo, ne condividiamo fotografie su piattaforme di vario tipo. In simile cornice gio-cano un ruolo fondamentale i cibi gustosi, secondo la logica marcatamente performativa del cosiddetto food porn, e sempre più anche quelli dis-gustosi, che, mediante particolari strategie enunciative e disposi-tivi retorici, riescono a smarcarsi dalla visione fisiologica ed evoluzionistica che legava in modo indisso-lubile il loro rifiuto alla tutela della salute e del benessere psicofisico per diventare essi stessi "appetito-si". Attraverso l'analisi semiotica di alcuni casi di studio particolarmente significativi e delle forme di testualità ad essi connessi, il presente paper individua e descrive le principali estetiche e politiche alimentari promosse da simile fenomeno, collocandosi sulla scia dell'interessante riflessione sull'esperienza gustativa all'incrocio tra dimensione estesica e fenomenologica, da un lato, e universo socioculturale, dall'altro.

“Maccarone, m’hai provocato e io ti distruggo adesso, maccarone. Io me te magno, ahmm”. Con queste celebri parole Nando Moriconi, l’“americano a Roma” del film di Steno rinuncia temporaneamente alla propria infatuazione per lo stile di vita americano per riscoprirsi pienamente italiano nel proprio rapporto con il cibo.
Proprio il cibo, in effetti, è generalmente considerato dagli italiani come uno degli aspetti più rappresentativi della propria identità nazionale, sentimento che arriva talvolta a sfociare in vere e proprie forme di convinto patriottismo quando non addirittura di aperto sciovinismo.
Se però, da un lato, l’universo gastronomico italiano si articola in numerose varianti regionali e locali irriducibili a un’unica tradizione e a pochi piatti stereotipati, dall’altro, la passione collettiva degli italiani per la “propria” cucina sembra fare riferimento a un immaginario ben preciso e circoscritto, che trova nella pasta il suo elemento più rappresentativo.
Perché? In che modo la pasta emerge come Oggetto di Valore in grado di sedurre il Soggetto (“gli italiani”), instaurando il processo amoroso (“amor di patria”)? E quali sono i valori di cui è investito tale Oggetto?
Al di là delle variabili di matrice storico-materiale che hanno portato alla creazione di un determinato immaginario culinario italiano, è interessante osservare ciò che avviene sul piano della significazione, analizzando il modo in cui la pasta giunge ad incarnare i valori dell’“italianità”, postulando così quella “conformità di essenza” tra Soggetto e Oggetto della passione che Roland Barthes descrive come centrale nel discorso amoroso: “io voglio essere l’altro, voglio che lui sia me, come se fossimo uniti” (1977, trad. it. 1979, 15).
In una simile prospettiva, assume particolare importanza il linguaggio pubblicitario, specchio e insieme generatore di simili valori. Si tratta, quindi, di analizzare come, nell’ambito del discorso pubblicitario, a diverse forme di rappresentazione e valorizzazione della pasta vengano a corrispondere particolari messe in scena dell’italianità. In particolare, l’attenzione sarà rivolta alle campagne audiovisive di Barilla, leader mondiale nel mercato della pasta: dal primo Carosello del 1958, che vedeva Giorgio Albertazzi recitare un sonetto dantesco per poi cedere la parola alla “nuova pastina glutinata”, ai recenti spot marchiati dalla voce di una delle icone del panorama musicale e culturale italiano, l’advertising communication della celebre azienda parmense rappresenta un repertorio di notevole interesse che permette di cogliere e analizzare il potenziale seduttivo della pasta nei confronti del pubblico italiano, prefigurando il momento dell’incontro amoroso: “una scoperta progressiva (quasi una verifica) della affinità, complicità e intimità”, in cui “ad ogni istante, [si] scopr[e] nell’altro un altro [s]e stesso” (ivi, 110)."

Food is intrinsically linked to time: first of all, the “food–material” is a living material, both physiologically and symbolically, since it is subject to organic decomposition, but can also acquire value because of ageing. Furthermore, different ingredients are generally combined together and “cooked” (in a Lévi–Straussian sense) according to specific instructions and preparation times in order to create various dishes and courses, which are also influenced by the temporal dimension, since they cool down or melt with the passing of time. Similarly, but also differently, the perception of food is strongly related to time: the tasting experience develops through different steps, involving various senses and dimensions. This paper deals precisely with the temporal characterisation of taste (and dis–taste), by relating the theoretical reflection on the perceptual dimension of the eating experience to temporality and aspectuality.

The number of people looking for online health information has rapidly increased in recent years, and is still increasing. Among the consequences of such a phenomenon, several scholars and professionals identified a new form of widespread hypochondria, which is known as “cyberchondria” or “web–hypochondria”. There are hundreds of data available on the Web that do not reassure health seekers at all, but rather lead them to compulsively look for new information, also making them believe that they suffer from (or may easily suffer from) specific diseases without a reliable diagnosis. In other words, common hypochondria — i.e. the debilitating condition resulting from a dysfunction in the perception of the condition of body or mind in the absence of evidence of organic pathology (Avia and Ruiz 2005) — has progressively turned into hyperchondria — i.e. a new, amplified, and unrestrained form of “mass hypochondria”, which finds in the Web its privileged means of communication. This paper aims at analysing the communicative processes and the meaning–making dynamics related to health communication in the Web era by making reference to the specific case of the MMR vaccine, which has widely spread through the Internet and has had important consequences on people’s thoughts ad behaviours. Finally, the results of such an analysis are related to a more general discussion on virality and its functioning logics.

A well–known aphorism by Brillat–Savarin (1825) states: “Tell me
what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are”. In fact, food represents
a fundamental component of life, encompassing different spheres and
moments. It provides not only the energy the body consumes, but also
the very substance of the body. Moreover, from a subjective point of
view, people often believe or fear, adhering to a sort of magical thinking,
that food acts on their organism or on their identity by analogical contamination,
integration, or impregnation (Fischler 1988). That has become
particularly evident in contemporary foodscapes, mainly according to a
‘negative logic’ that would require rephrasing Brillat–Savarin’s aphorism
as follows: “Tell me what you do not eat, and I shall tell you what you
are”. Lately, food habits forbidding the consumption of specific ingredients
(e.g., vegetarianism, veganism, etc.) or even biological molecules
and other nutritional materials (e.g., gluten–free movements, protein–
based diets, etc.) have spread and become increasing visible, further enhancing the importance of taboos for both the sociocultural order
and the processes of identity building. At the crossroad of physiology
and medicine, on the one hand, and the sociocultural dimension, on the
other hand, food defines people’s identity primarily in negative terms,
through prohibitions and restraints. The essay deals with the recent
spread of gluten–free movements and with the vertiginous increase in
gluten sensitivity rates, which have resulted in the diffusion of conspiracy
theories that explain these phenomena as caused by the globalization of
markets and the misuse of genetic modifications. The analysis of relevant
case–studies leads to describe the features and internal mechanisms
of the specific rhetoric underlying such discourses, also relating to more
general observations on conspiracy theories.

Together with clothing, urban artefacts and other aspects of daily life, nutrition is not only one of the basic human needs, but also a system of communication (Barthes, 1961) and expression of sociocultural identity (Levi-Strauss, 1965; Montanari, 2006; Stano, 2015). Undoubtedly food habits, preferences and taboos are partially regulated by ecological and material factors (Harris, 1975). By contrast, all food systems are structured and given particular functioning mechanisms by specific societies—or, better, cultures (Volli, 2015). Although several scholars have remarked this fact, most present-day texts, discourses, and practices concerning food seem to particularly stress a sort of supposed “naturalness” inherent to food systems. Such “naturalness” is generally conceived as both the praise of everything that opposes artificiality (Marrone, 2011) and a return to an original and idyllic past, namely a “tradition” crystallised in “authentic” recipes, “typical” restaurants, etc. Responding to the urgency of enhancing the academic debate on these issues, this paper analyses a specific case study that, albeit being particularly significant, has not been sufficiently investigated yet: the so-called “Mediterranean diet”. The idea of such a diet originated from the scientific field, in the wake of medical research (Keys & Keys, 1975; Keys, 1980) correlating the low incidence of cardiovascular diseases among the inhabitants of specific areas (i.e. the Cilento region in Italy) and a particular nutritional regime, mainly defined by the use of certain ingredients and specific techniques of preparation of food. The interest in this topic has then increasingly grown, extending beyond the simple definition of healthy rules regulating nutrition, and embracing the social and cultural implications of the particular “lifestyle” that has come to be identified with the Mediterranean diet. In this sense, the genealogy of the inclusion of such a diet in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity—with the initial rejection in 2007, the approval in 2010 in relation to Italy, Greece, Spain and Morocco, and the extension to Portugal, Croatia and Cyprus in 2013—is emblematic. Moreover, it is essential to point out the important role played by sociocultural elements in the definition of the Mediterranean diet provided by the United Nations: “[it] involves a set of skills, knowledge, rituals, symbols and traditions concerning crops, harvesting, fishing, animal husbandry, conservation, processing, cooking, and particularly the sharing and consumption of food” (UNESCO, 2013). These observations open the way to interesting questions concerning both the processes of meaning making and the definition of food systems. We should notice, first of all, the transition from a purely material conception of the Mediterranean diet, stressing its effects on the human body, to a primarily cultural vision, which rather conceives nutrition as a “form of life” (Fontanille, 1993)—that is, a set of rituals, symbolic operations, and practices of expression of “taste” (i.e. a term significantly referring both to “the sense by which [we distinguish] the qualities and flavour of a substance” (Collins, 2014) and to our “preference or liking for something” (Ibid.)). Furthermore, the active and transformative—and therefore conscious—nature of such operations emerges, suggesting a process of “invention of [the] tradition” (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983) of the Mediterranean diet, whose imaginary is characterised by a series of remarkable inconsistencies. Although the lifestyle described by the United Nations and the features remarked by many scholars (see Moro, 2014) have been historically shared by several peoples leaving in the Mediterranean area, it is not possible to deny the significant differences among the numerous Mediterranean diets, which are in fact very varied, and not easy to define nor to classify. We should consider, moreover, the processes of globalisation and hybridisation that have affected food in the last decades, with important implications on the grammars, syntaxes, and pragmatics of systems that, instead, tend to be subjected to a process of “crystallisation” denying such dynamism. This paper addresses these crucial issues, making particular reference to relevant texts and discourses that have marked the genesis and development of the so-called Mediterranean diet and of the collective imaginary concerning it.

This paper deals with the processes of construction of identity and alterity, making particular reference to the culinary and gastronomic sphere. Building on an extensive bibliography in philosophy and semiotics, we aim to describe the tensions and oppositions underlying the dynamics through which the Self and the Other incessantly (re-)define and (re-)shape each other, activating interesting processes of “translation”, “stereotyping” and “misunderstanding” that cannot be described according to a univocal and pre-fixed logic, but should be rather analysed through tensive models and dialectic relations (between past and future, stillness and change, constancy and innovation, idem and ipse, …), making reference to specific approaches and tools of analyses able to grasp their transformational nature.

This paper addresses a crucial question: why is a semiotics of food needed and useful? Food is not only a substance for survival and nourishment, but is also part of a sign system since it is strictly involved in processes of signification. After exploring this issue, we propose a brief examination of the main contributions dealing with food symbolism and the food system. The paper therefore presents some hypotheses concerning the role of semiotics within food studies, trying to individuate the main issues which seem in need to be urgently dealt with and pointing out the need for complementing the more traditional approaches to the new branches focusing on the observation of practices, social dynamics, and other tools of analysis. Finally, attention is drawn to interdisciplinarity, suggesting the importance of connecting semiotics with the other disciplines that have traditionally dealt with food.

Coming from the Greek dìaita, which means “life, lifestyle”, the
word diet is generally defined as a set of rules regulating not only the
assumption of food, but also physical exercise. Not surprisingly, one of
the synonyms of this term is the word regime, deriving from the Latin
verb règere, “to manage, to rule”. Diet can be therefore understood as
a system of signs, namely as a language composed by particular signs,
texts, discourses, and practices. Form of life in which identity emerges in
the intersection of the body and the textual and discursive dimensions,
diet is based on particular dynamics related to the cognitive–epistemic
(belief ), pragmatic (praxis), and emotional (passion) point of view. The
main aim of this paper is to think over the agency of the images used
by the so–called health and fitness magazines, analysing how the iconic
language is able to orient, encourage, or even trigger the action of the
observer in a field that can be considered not only as a dietetic regime,
but also as a sense regime.

From eggs to yoghurt, from the American pie to rotten tomatoes, food has been largely used in protest actions. Moreover, we should not forget hunger strikes, which consist in nonviolent practices of prolonged voluntary fasting expressing dissent against something or someone. Besides, another very interesting case is that of the demonstrations in favour of vegetarianism and against the very common practice of eating meat, where the human body itself symbolically becomes the food to be consumed. So, how can food serve as an instrument of dissent? Does a “food protest” exist? And, if so, how can it be analysed from a semiotic point of view? Thinking over some interesting case studies, chosen for their relevance among many present or recent examples, this paper aims at answering these questions.

"Porta Palazzo, an area within the city of Turin, spans part of the district Circoscrizione 1 (“Centro–Crocetta”) and part of Circoscrizione 7 (“Aurora–Madonna del Pilone–Vanchiglia”), including the archaeological zone, part of the ancient old town (up to Corso Regina Margherita), the remains of the old village outside the city walls, the Arsenal, the Cottolengo area, the former railway station Cirié–Lanzo, and the large complex of the Balôn. Although not representing a “neighbourhood” or a “district” in administrative terms and being characterized by a deeply heterogeneous urban fabric, as well as by a very diversified population, most of Turin inhabitants, as well as many national and international touristy and commercial actors perceive this area as unified.
Why? What are the elements that make it possible to absorb such diversity and fragmentation in a quite worldwide shared uniform image? Or, in semiotic terms, what are the isotopies that allow one to perceive the urban text “Porta Palazzo” as homogeneous, and distinguished from its context?
The present paper tries to answer these questions through analyzing some of the most relevant fictional representations (setting) referring to Porta Palazzo (environment) and the adaptive practices of individuals and communities that have settled there over time (habitat). Finally, the paper proposes some considerations about the discrepancy between the urban and the administrative levels, on the one hand, and those of the imaginary and the signification, on the other."

"[MONOGRAPHIC ISSUE]

The Islamic veil has become a central issue in mass communication and policy administration. Unfortunately, its representations are strongly stereotyped and often seem to reflect a willingness to invest this cultural headdress with a negative sense, marking it as the symbol of the savagery, violence and backwardness of Islam. This signifies the loss of the variety originally linked to the so-called hijab, whose nature is deeply characterized by polysemy, diversity and indeterminateness depending on the peculiar context it is related to.
This article tries to go ‘under’ the veil of such stereotyped images and to explore the mechanisms through which mass media – and in particular women’s magazines – create and support certain representations of the hijab.
What are the main isotopies of the veil we can find? Are they the result of the combination of figurative and plastic signifiers used in accordance with fixed and specific rules or rather associations set from time to time depending on each particular enunciative context? Are there any models that seem to be more used than others? Why? And what happens to the veil when it comes into contact with Western society and lifestyle (especially with the fashion system)?
By answering these questions as well as others I have tried to show how the representations of Muslim women and the veils they wear seem to take shape, suggesting certain interpretations of the relationship between the East and West, on one side, and the values of oppression and emancipation of women, on the other.
Could not it be that our minds, too, are often covered by a ‘veil’: an invisible but very heavy burqa under which it is often demanded we see the world surrounding us?"

"The Islamic veil has become a central issue in mass communication and policy administration. Unfortunately, its representations are strongly stereotyped and often seem to reflect a willingness to invest this cultural headdress with a negative sense, marking it as the symbol of the savagery, violence and backwardness of Islam. This signifies the loss of the variety originally linked to the so-called hijab, whose nature is deeply characterized by polysemy, diversity and indeterminateness depending on the peculiar context it is related to.
This article tries to go ‘under’ the veil of such stereotyped images and to explore the mechanisms through which mass media – and in particular women’s magazines – create and support certain representations of the hijab.
What are the main isotopies of the veil we can find? Are they the result of the combination of figurative and plastic signifiers used in accordance with fixed and specific rules or rather associations set from time to time depending on each particular enunciative context? Are there any models that seem to be more used than others? Why? And what happens to the veil when it comes into contact with Western society and lifestyle (especially with the fashion system)?
By answering these questions as well as others I have tried to show how the representations of Muslim women and the veils they wear seem to take shape, suggesting certain interpretations of the relationship between the East and West, on one side, and the values of oppression and emancipation of women, on the other.
Could not it be that our minds, too, are often covered by a ‘veil’: an invisible but very heavy burqa under which it is often demanded we see the world surrounding us?"

AI systems can have different bodies. First of all, a mechanical body, the one hosting their software, whose dimensions have been progressively reduced over time. This has allowed for a real incorporation of AI into the human body, originating hybrid corporealities — though with problematic aspects. This paper explores such corporealities (and problematic aspects), as well as the attempt of providing AI agents with human–like bodies, ranging from relevant examples of recent technological innovations to collective representations of the (im)possible bodies of AI, in order to understand the effects of meaning deriving from them, and their relations to the philosophical and semiotic reflection on corporeality.

Public institutions, governmental agencies, health providers, marketing operators, media companies, and various other public and private actors interact constitutively in the negotiation of food meanings and practices: as Roland Barthes (1961) effectively pointed out, food is “not only a collection of products that can be used for statistical or nutritional studies[, but] also, and at the same time, a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations, and behaviors” (Engl. Transl. 1997, 21). Thus, if on the one hand, natural and nutritional sciences undoubtedly play a crucial role in the description, comprehension, and regulation of the material dimension of food — e.g. by revealing its composition and basic constituents, as well as the processes of transformations or decay that can affect it, thus also illustrating its possible effects on our body and health —, on the other hand, one cannot avoid considering the processes of signification and valorisation brought about by the discursive strategies adopted for communicating food, either in the political, journalistic, regulatory or even scientific domain.
Drawing on these premises, we intend to analyse the largely debated issue of GMOs use in food, as opposed to organic farming and other so-called “natural” methods for the production of food products. To this purpose, we will analyse, through a semiotic approach, and problematize the institutional descriptions of such issues and their regulations, also focusing on a series of relevant discourses — mainly related to online journalism and social networks — that invest them with particular meanings and values.

From the Greek σημεῖον sēmeion, “sign, mark”, the term semiotics shares its etymology with the word semeiotics, which refers to the branch of medicine dealing with the interpretation of symptoms. In fact, according to various scholars (see, for instance, Baer 1988; Sebeok 2001), semeiotics may be considered a semiotic approach through and through — and possibly the first one ever. Although describing symptoms as brute facts emerging from the body — i.e. purely phenomenal sensations that are not necessarily linked to any act of interpretation —, in fact, Roland Barthes (1972) supported that they turn into signs once they are “put into discourse”, that is, when they are “modelled” (in Lotman’s (1977) terms) through language. Thomas Sebeok (1976) then pushed further the association between signs and symptoms, conceiving the latter as “compulsive, automatic, non-arbitrary sign[s], such that the signifier coupled with the signified in the manner of a natural link” (46). In this view, the symptoms are then conceived as a marked category (species) of an unmarked one (genus, i.e. the sign), thus acquiring a semiotic status per se. Whichever perspective one takes, it is undeniable that corporeality plays a crucial role in the processes of signification underlying semeiotics: the body is not only the place where symptoms become visible, but also the entity experiencing them (on the perceptual level) and making them intelligible (on the cognitive level). What is more, the body is part of the world and interacts with such a world, thus necessarily being a “social body”. This implies that symptoms, making themselves visible on and through the body, cannot but be put into a discourse, since that body cannot but communicate with other bodies. Our presentation will retrace the theoretical reflection on these issues, also relating to more recent research on sensoriality, aesthesis, and corporeality (see in particular Pozzato and Violi 2002; Fontanille 2004; Finol 2015; 2016).

This paper deals with taste and distaste from a semiotic point of view, combining some initial physiological and material observations with a thorough reconstruction and description of the cognitive dynamics and the meaning-making processes associated with the so-called “(dis-)tasting experience”. To this purpose, we examine an extensive literature, through a comparative approach aimed at showing the complementarity of different approaches and analytical perspectives. This allows showing how taste and distaste extend from the senses to sense, also providing a better understanding of
some of the most evident aspects of contemporary Western foodspheres, that is to say, the “(hyper-)semioticization” of the nutritional dimension of food and the increasing spread of “free from” dietary habits.

Chinese cuisine is known and especially praised for the attention it pays to every aspect of food, “from its palatableness to its texture, and from its fragrance to its colourfulness; until, as in other works of art, proportion and balance are instilled in every dish” (Feng, 1966 [1952]). Within its huge variety — including gastronomic traditions originating from various regions of China, as well as from Chinese people living in other countries —, in fact, such a cuisine strongly emphasises the aesthetic dimension of food, in relation to both its preparation and consumption. This acquires further importance if we consider the extensive spread of Chinese food around the world and its consequent hybridisation with other foodspheres, including Western gastronomic traditions. This paper explores the aesthetic values associated with Chinese culinary arts by making reference to existing literature on Chinese food cultures and analysing some relevant case studies, especially in relation to the collective imaginary of Chinese cuisine between the East and the West. In the conclusion, a more general reflection concerning the philosophical and semiotic discussion on taste and its judgement is provided.

“Hidden”, “temporary”, “itinerant”, and “underground” are some of the adjectives that are frequently used to describe the so–called “guerrilla restaurants”. Since more than a decade ago, such forms of “hidden eatery” have promoted new dietary practices, also continuously “rewriting” urban texts because of their ephemeral and irregular existence. Such a phenomenon has increased visibly in recent years, also leading to socially and legally recognised services, which left the “underground” dimension and became “home restaurants”. Home restaurants have further developed the model of “social eating” promoted by their illegal predecessors, enhancing communication through the introduction of digital platforms (such as Gnammo.com, Ceneromane, Le Cesarine, Eatwith, etc.) for mapping, describing, evaluating, and managing their services and performances. At the same time, they have fomented interesting processes of gamification and active participation in civic life, as well as relevant practices of dematerialisation and rewriting of the urban space. This chapter aims to reflect on such processes by making reference to relevant case studies, which will be analysed through a semiotic methodology.

The Food Studies Program, New York University (NYU), the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Communication (CIRCe) and the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences, University of Turin, in collaboration with the EU Program Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA – GA No 795025), encourage submissions for the International Conference
"Food for Thought: Nourishment, Culture, Meaning", dirs. Dr. Simona Stano and Prof. Amy Bentley - New York (US), October 14-15, 2019