SCENT, SOUND AND SYNAESTHESIA Intersensoriality and Material Culture Theory

The importance of attending to the multiple sensory dimensions of objects, architectures and landscapes is quickly becoming a central tenet of material culture theory. This sensual turn – or better, 'revolution' (Howes 2004) – is evident in the various references to the sensuous made by the contributors to The Material Culture Reader (Buchli 2002). In 'Contested land-scapes', Barbara Bender writes: 'landscapes are not just " views " but intimate encounters. They are not just about seeing, but about experiencing with all the senses' (2002: 136). In his chapter on 'Trench art', Nicholas Saunders discusses the heightened sensory experience of warfare, 1 and the ability of material objects (e.g. recycled munition shells) to 'act as a bridge between mental and physical worlds' (2002: 181). In 'Visual culture', Chris Pinney argues that the field of visual culture (as currently understood) 'needs to be superseded by an engagement with embodied culture ... that recognizes the unified nature of the human sensorium' (2002: 84–5). Christopher Tilley devotes a chapter to an analysis of the sensory and social symbolism of Wala canoes. The Wala, a people of Vanuatu, traditionally attributed various sensory powers to their canoes and embodied this understanding by carving ears, mouths and 'moustaches' as well as male and female sexual organs on the prow and stern. According to Tilley: 'The power of [this] imagery resides in its condensation of reference linked with the sensual and tactile qualities of its material form and reference to the human body' (2002: 25). The implication to be drawn from these highly stimulating references to the sensuous is that material culture, in addition to materializing social relations and symbolizing the cosmos, gives expression to a particular set of sensual relations. Thus, Wala canoes may be said to condense the sensory – as well as social and symbolic – orders of Wala culture. They are attributed sentience in the same way that they render sensible the cardinal ideas of Wala society. Otherwise put, Wala canoes, and their uses, embody Wala 'ways of sensing' (Howes 2003). My aim in this chapter is to discuss the significance of scent, sound and synaesthesia for material culture studies. My account opens with a consideration of the model of 'synaesthesia' (literally, 'joining of the senses') advanced by Lawrence Sullivan, a scholar of comparative religion, in a seminal article entitled 'Sound and senses' (1986). It goes on to provide a synopsis of the burgeoning …