He who plays the angel plays the beast: Odors and perfumes in the West.
Editions du Félin| N° d'inventaire | 31168 |
| Format | 11.5 x 17.5 |
| Détails | 413 p., fig. 61, paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2024 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782494297517 |
If our culture relegated the sense of smell as animal, it has constantly - and unknowingly - "spoken about the nose" through our likes and dislikes, our sensitive memory and our spiritual or religious experiences. This essay questions what was at stake in the age-old contempt for olfaction and then questions its contemporary rehabilitation: we reactivate its role in medicine, we reveal its unconscious influence on our choices and feelings, we meditate on its place in art. Inhibited in the past or celebrated today, the sense of smell has always oscillated between triviality and nobility, bestiality and spirituality, pleasure and knowledge, angel and demon.
If our culture relegated the sense of smell as animal, it has constantly - and unknowingly - "spoken about the nose" through our likes and dislikes, our sensitive memory and our spiritual or religious experiences. This essay questions what was at stake in the age-old contempt for olfaction and then questions its contemporary rehabilitation: we reactivate its role in medicine, we reveal its unconscious influence on our choices and feelings, we meditate on its place in art. Inhibited in the past or celebrated today, the sense of smell has always oscillated between triviality and nobility, bestiality and spirituality, pleasure and knowledge, angel and demon.