<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>This article studies comparatively references to tables in Virginia Woolf’s novel <italic>To the Lighthouse</italic> and two films, Peter Greenaway’s <italic>The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover</italic> and Wong Kar-Wai’s <italic>In the Mood for Love</italic>. Greenaway announces from the title a concern with a cook, which the film duly elaborates by setting its action mostly in a restaurant and its kitchen; tables as the central part of the set visualise power configurations. In Wong’s film about failed love, the kitchen and/or tables as part of the décor reinforce mainstream notions of middle-class domesticity. Woolf challenges middle-class views of gender in two episodes from Part I – Mrs Ramsay’s dinner party and the dialogue between Lily Briscoe and Andrew Ramsay about the object of his father’s philosophy books – by defamiliarising respectively the dining-and kitchen tables. The latter scene, which repurposes the <italic>idea</italic> of the kitchen table as an analogon for philosophy’s construal of the nature of reality, opens up an epistemic avenue: thinking <italic>with</italic> the kitchen table. My general frame for analysis is Edmund Husserl’s concept of orientation, sustained by Bertrand Russell’s propositions about unobserved objects and unoccupied perspectives. However, I twist these conceptual tools intersectionally to unravel the social grounds of philosophical and artistic positions that obfuscate gendered contributions to knowledge, sustenance and general well-being.</p></abstract>

This article studies comparatively references to tables in Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse and two films, Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love. Greenaway announces from the title a concern with a cook, which the film duly elaborates by setting its action mostly in a restaurant and its kitchen; tables as the central part of the set visualise power configurations. In Wong’s film about failed love, the kitchen and/or tables as part of the décor reinforce mainstream notions of middle-class domesticity. Woolf challenges middle-class views of gender in two episodes from Part I – Mrs Ramsay’s dinner party and the dialogue between Lily Briscoe and Andrew Ramsay about the object of his father’s philosophy books – by defamiliarising respectively the dining-and kitchen tables. The latter scene, which repurposes the idea of the kitchen table as an analogon for philosophy’s construal of the nature of reality, opens up an epistemic avenue: thinking with the kitchen table. My general frame for analysis is Edmund Husserl’s concept of orientation, sustained by Bertrand Russell’s propositions about unobserved objects and unoccupied perspectives. However, I twist these conceptual tools intersectionally to unravel the social grounds of philosophical and artistic positions that obfuscate gendered contributions to knowledge, sustenance and general well-being.

Kitchen and Other Tables to Think With: The Case of <italic>To the Lighthouse</italic>, <italic>The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover</italic> and <italic>In the Mood for Love</italic>

American, British and Canadian Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Kitchen and Other Tables to Think With: The Case of ,  and 

This article studies comparatively references to tables in Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse and two films, Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His...

Kitchen and Other Tables to Think With: The Case of To the Lighthouse, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and In the Mood for Love

Published Online: Dec 21, 2019

Page range: 47 - 68

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/abcsj-2019-0015

Keywords
(Virginia Woolf), (Peter Greenaway), (Wong Kar-Wai), kitchen table, dinner table, intersectionality theory, philosophy, orientation (Edmund Husserl), unobserved objects (Bertrand Russell), unoccupied perspective (Bertrand Russell)

© 2019 Estella Antoaneta Ciobanu, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Kitchen and Other Tables to Think With: The Case of To the Lighthouse, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and In the Mood for Love

Published Online: Dec 21, 2019

Page range: 47 - 68

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/abcsj-2019-0015

Keywords(Virginia Woolf), (Peter Greenaway), (Wong Kar-Wai), kitchen table, dinner table, intersectionality theory, philosophy, orientation (Edmund Husserl), unobserved objects (Bertrand Russell), unoccupied perspective (Bertrand Russell)

© 2019 Estella Antoaneta Ciobanu, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
(Virginia Woolf), (Peter Greenaway), (Wong Kar-Wai), kitchen table, dinner table, intersectionality theory, philosophy, orientation (Edmund Husserl), unobserved objects (Bertrand Russell), unoccupied perspective (Bertrand Russell)