ENGLISH TITLE: Food between Identity and Alterity: the Self and the Other under Different Regimes

ABSTRACT: 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.

KEYWORDS: food; identity; otherness; translation; misunderstanding.