Mediality of Smells / Médialité des odeurs

The study of scents and all things olfactory is thriving, a sign of the great interest that our information-based society feels for a sense that seems to offer a direct and immediate experience of reality. But smells resist description and representation, especially given that they are closely linked to individual personal experience, and their perception has changed through time and space in a myriad of ways. This volume aims to contribute to the flourishing multidisciplinary exchanges around smells by examining the question of their mediality, focusing on the mechanisms by which the olfactory experience, as well as the scents themselves, circulate and are diffused, but also by exploring the modes of smell as a medium in itself. Drawing on a wide variety of approaches, cultural zones, and historical periods, this volume gathers the contributions of twenty-one researchers who specialize in this field in order to explore the multiple aspects of olfactory culture, which characterizes and shapes our relations to smells.

La richesse de l’actualité en matière d’odeurs et d’odorat témoigne du vif intérêt de nos sociétés de l’information pour un sens qui semble offrir une saisie directe et immédiate du réel. Circulant de manière très variable à travers le temps et l’espace, les odeurs font l’objet d’une perception qui résiste d’autant plus à la description et à la représentation qu’elle reste individuelle et liée à l’histoire personnelle. Ce volume vise à contribuer aux échanges interdisciplinaires sur l’olfaction à travers la question de la médialité, en s’interrogeant sur les mécanismes par lesquels l’expérience olfactive et les odeurs sont transmises et diffusées, mais aussi en explorant les modalités de l’odeur comme médium. Proposant une diversité d’approches, d’aires culturelles et de périodes, ce volume rassemble les contributions de vingt-et-un spécialistes qui étudient comment la culture olfactive caractérise et construit nos rapports aux odeurs.

Jean-Alexandre Perras holds a PhD in French literature from the University of Montreal and the University of Paris 8. His thesis, L’Exception exemplaire: inventions et usages du génie (XVI^e-XVIII^e siècle), was published in 2015. He is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie research fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, where his research focuses on the innovation strategies of eighteenth-century hairdressers.

Érika Wicky holds a PhD in art history from the University of Montreal. After her dissertation on nineteenth-century visual culture published under the title Les paradoxes du détail: Voir, savoir, representer à l’ère de la photographie (2015), she dedicated her research to the history of olfactory culture (eighteenth to twentieth century). She is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie research fellow (University Lumière Lyon 2 / LARHRA), where she studies the smell of paint crossing history of art and history of sciences.