Can you eat a book? Or does it eat you? 

A book-meal in preparation (2013-present). Here we announce the junction of philosophical vitalism and the culinary arts while exploring the notion of the manuscript. How does one arrange text, ideas, images to open up a world? "Manuscript" means written-by-hand: textual cooking then. For writing is, just like cooking, a process of construction, and chapters are like dishes. We construct while the reader consumes (and destroys) the form in order to be nourished.

As the base of life, food is the threefold primordial form of a) need, b) nourishment, and c) luxury. We do not see food (and with it cuisine) as a construction that cooks impose ex post facto. Rather, we attempt to extricate (i.e. free and release) intensities immanent to life itself. There are threads and subterranean lines that although not immediately visible always vibrate (the first sign of being alive). Through listening, we bundle them into resonant plateaus: boiling pots rupture the surface and give off aromatic air (new atmospheres). 

Following food’s inescapable nature of existing “before” (e.g. we eat in the womb before ever being born), we address a particular materiality that lies a priori. As philosopher-cooks we actualize and divinize properties already present in the products, techniques, dishes, etc. And so we unearth carrots, apply a little heat to release hidden aspects - oils, juices, aromas, textures - that give a new sweetness, otherwise dormant.

Table of Contents

V, The Opening
Territory
Cruelty
Asceticism
Sorcery
Storytelling
Spirit of the Kitchen
Imperium
Metabolic Thinking