At Home in Tuscany: Slow Living and the Cosmopolitan Subject

Abstract

This article will examine how the recent proliferation of “at home in Tuscany” literature represents a desire to live differently through both a change of location and a change in temporality. Slow living is offered as the key to an enriched life and is closely linked to notions of authenticity bound up with everyday practices of domesticity, especially those connected with food. In looking closely at some examples of this Tuscan farmhouse literature and considering what constitutes la vita lenta, I will analyze two broad areas of concern: first, how the values and practices of slow living constitute a particular kind of “slow” subject, characterized by cosmopolitanism but located in domesticity; secondly, whether the celebration of slow living is a nostalgic and reactionary evasion of the “real world,” or whether it represents an opportunity to think ethically and creatively about how we live.