The Senses in History

The senses are such an important part of our day-to-day lives. They connect us to the world through our bodies in a way that cannot be duplicated by any other means. We generally think of this connection as one that sits firmly in time at the moment it was experienced, and this leads us to ignore the sensations experienced by others in the past. If the sensory experience is so important for us, would it not be beneficial (or even necessary) in understanding historical figures to understand their lives through that lens?

One key to the understanding of senses is that they do not occur in isolation. They are interrelated, so they must be examined as such. It would be interesting to take time in the social studies classroom to examine all five of the senses during a historical event. Mark M. Smith suggests that touch was vital in the slave auction process, but what would the experience for the other senses have been? Would the combination of touch, smell and sight have given the trader his overall assessment?

The sense of smell is one that can be difficult to examine historically because it has such a powerful experiential factor. It can certainly be explained, but the experience that we associate with a smell makes it hard to duplicate. Connie Chiang notes that the sense of smell has often been associated with discriminatory actions. She mentions that the inhabitants of late 19^th century San Francisco were repulsed by the supposed stench of the Chinatown in that city. This is possibly an example of the prior discrimination being justified with “smell evidence”. As we all know, almost everything has a smell. As we spend more and more time in a certain environment, the smell in that environment begins to become the base-line for our definition of smell. We no longer consider that environment to smell, only other different smelling environments. The discrimination of Chinatown seems to be based on the fact that they were different, and smell was merely one variation on that difference. It appears that sight is not the only sense that can lead some to discriminate because of diversity.

A stumbling block to the senses being examined as historically authoritative is that they are seen as inferior or anti-intellectual. They cannot be defined in purely academic terms so they are dismissed as unimportant to historical inquiry. The fact is that they are vital to understanding the day-to-day lives of those in our past. It will be interesting to see if there is a revival in the recognition of the importance of the senses to history.