Sensory history
[1] Works of sensory history try to convey a deeper understanding of the past through an emphasis on physical experiences.
[1] The concept of the pre-eminence of sight in the modern world, has also prompted a particular focus on the other four senses in works of sensory history in order to readdress this inequality.
[9] Historian Alain Corbin produced one of the first books focussing exclusively on sensory history in 1982, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination, a discussion on the role of smell in 18th and 19th century France.
They also describe how the industrialisation of food production went hand in hand with the ways in which attention to the senses helped invent, formulate, and produce goods like tin-cans, cheeses or convenience foods (tv dinners) that were acceptable and appealing to consumers' eyes, noses, ears, teeth, and tongues.
[3] This can involve more creative methods of presentation, such as living museums or interactive exhibitions, in order for the audience to more deeply experience and understand the past.
He argues that presentations of sensory history such as living museums undermine the integrity of sensory history, as they suggest that a person is able to experience the past in the same way that those who lived the experience did, regardless of their fundamentally different contexts and places unnecessary importance on the 'consumption' of the past.
German naturalist Lorenz Oken characterised Africans as the uncivilised "skin-man," as opposed to the civilised European "eye-man," thus utilising touch to support racist ideology.
[18] For example, in renaissance and early modern England debates ranged from the role of the kiss in Christian practices to the legitimacy of the 'royal touch', which was reputed to heal the sick.
[19][20] Additionally, the sense of touch is such an integral part of everyday life and experience that it is not often referred to explicitly in historical sources, and so is an "inferred history" as named by historian Constance Classen.
"[30] Rarely has the sense of smell been given any prominence in the study of history, which partly stems from the difficulty the English language poses in describing olfactory sensations.
Aristotle first pointed this out in De Anima, and it is continually seen in the reliance upon words related to flavour when describing smells.
"[35] In Alain Corbin's book The Foul and the Fragrant, he argues that the sense of smell is inherently tied to social power, as historically certain groups of people have been rendered as 'lesser' because of lack of hygiene.
[17] Due to this supposed supremacy, particularly within the sensory hierarchy of the west, there is no dearth of visual analysis in the practice of traditional history writing.
In his essay, When Seeing Makes Scents, Mark M. Smith argues that these visual sources can be mined for information about the other four senses in order to gain a more complete understanding of past sensory experiences.
Additionally in Empire of the Senses: a Cultural Reader, David Howes has selected essays which represent a large cross-section of the field.
[citation needed] For the renewal of food history that goes beyond taste to embrace the other senses, see Vabre, Bruegel, Atkins (2021).
