Enfilade

The Five Senses of the City: From the Middle Ages to the Contemporary Period
Tours, 19-20 May 2011

Proposals due by 30 November 2010

The conference The Five Senses and the City aims to explore the urban sensorial landscape (Alain Corbin), starting from the individual and collective experience of city dwellers and users, an experience which can be understood as a resource for sensible expression and action (Arlette Farge), in association with the study of the objects of sensorial perception. Our ambition is to historicize the link between urban space and the senses, as a central tool for the construction of the city as a body of significations (Jean François Augoyard). Urban reality is elaborated through “spatial practices” (Michel de Certeau), among which sensorial experiences are essential: our reflection on the urban aspects of the history of sensibility will thus concentrate on the figure of the urban dweller as a privileged observer, as well as the urban landscape and the people who live in it. The city shall furthermore be considered as the generator and amplifier of sensorial experience; it can thus appear in turn attractive or repellent to groups that approach and occupy it.

The history of sensorial experience is not linear: the hierarchy of the senses is in permanent flux, depending on the historical, geographical and cultural context. Discourses on senses and their representations are shaped by science, religion, politics, art and literature: for instance, how come the 19th century city is so often pictured in rural settings? We should also take into account and analyse the role of ethics and medicine, which are central in the shaping of socio-political distinctions: let’s consider, for instance, the perception of poor neighbourhoods since 18th century, or that of a faraway city by an amateur traveller or a scientist or again, that of inner cities today. The posture and position of the body in motion are crucial in our perceptions. Medieval and modern conceptions of the human “body” governed by humours, as well as penetrated by natural and supernatural forces, will help us to think differently about the nature and hierarchy of sensations. Furthermore, the increasingly important role of technical and urban changes since the XVIIIth century has to be taken into account, since they play a major part in the history of urban sensibility: let’s think about city lighting, means of transportation (horses, cars, trains…), infrastructures (water, gas, electricity, sewage system…). Furthermore, sensorial experience is structured by gender identities, through a series of prohibitions and possibilities. How does gender, combined with other social categories, organize the hierarchy of perceptions? How do sensations – shaped by representations – infere in the perception of a urban space (e.g. the link “Paris, the city of pleasure” – “Paris, the city of the woman”)? In other words, what does it mean to “feel at home”, to be “touched” by another person? How can we register the urban experience of the Other?

In addition to history, the history of urban sensibility calls for the cooperation of many disciplines, such as sociology, geography, ethnology, philosophy, cognition, as well as literary or theatre studies, linguistics, musicology, art and architecture history, urban planning and urbanism.

1/ Senses, social identities, and the construction of alterity
The sensorial landscape differs from one urban neighbourhood to another, from one city to another, and from one culture to another. Sounds, voices, scents, smells, colours and the ways people look at each other and touch each other, all gestures and movements are key elements which participate in the construction of social, regional and cultural identities. The place we call “elsewhere” feels different. The sensorial identity of a place contributes to the construction of social and cultural differences. For example “beaux quartiers” means rich neighbourhoods. Some cities are perceived as “exotic” because they are strange to Occidental sensorial habits. Paris becomes the “city of love”, we talk of neighbourhoods with “immigrants”, of the Jewish ghetto of medieval or modern times, of the Paris quarter of the “Marais” as synonym of homosexuality. Urban riversides are characterized by economic and cultural activities (tanneries, prostitution, strolling, etc.). How can we explain the construction of sensorial identities, their appropriation, and their social and political importance?

2/ Spaces and temporalities of sensorial experience
The sensorial experience of a city varies depending on climate, seasons, weather conditions, the time of day and/or night. Claude Monet’s vision of the Rouen cathedral is a telling example. Time and place thus are key factors in the sensorial perception of the city and the image the observer keeps in mind.

3/ Administration, management and policing of sensibilities in the urban space
The authorities know how to manipulate the city-dwellers’ sensibility to get their own way. Demonstrations, religious processions, official political gatherings address all five senses at once. In a case of emergency, for events of collective importance or in order to make a public announcement, the voice and the drum of the town crier, the ringing of church or town hall’s bells or the trumpets of a regiment’s band can inspire fear or joy, political support or rejection. Noises, music, colours, smells (fireworks, incense, etc.) infuse the sensorial landscape with political and emotional meanings. Public performances thus become instruments of power but also instruments which can challenge this power. From the seventeenth century onwards, urban development increasingly takes into account city dwellers’ senses (smells, noises) by associating their senses to the display of power, e.g. through the erection of public buildings and statues and their decoration or the setting up of infrastructures and commercial sites. The shaping of the urban materiality also means the ‘shaping up’ of people’s sensibility. For this very reason, it is important to assess trauma as a sensorial experience due for example to destruction in war-time, to fire or natural disaster which radically transform the sensorial framework.

4/ How does a city taste?
Do cities have a taste of their own? The question combines the history of food with urban history and can provide insights in the ways a site is perceived, represented and remembered. Local culinary specialities and traditions have informed the urban space with the Paris cafe or the Viennese coffee-house, the Bavarian tavern or the “gargotes” in Arab cities or the tea-sellers in India. How does the “terroir” relate to the city, does urban taste inform public policies, what economic issues are at stake?

5/ The history of the senses and environmental history
The modern idea of environment is based on a scientific discourse which has to be questioned; nevertheless that concept is also the result of the transformation of our sensibilities, which came with the reorganization of Western societies since the early modern times. Historically speaking, the senses shape a specific urban ecological attentiveness, starting with smells (strategies of improvement of urban sanitation systems, 18th c.) and completed in modern times by visual perception (the city of Haussmann in the 19th c.; the “ugly city” of the 21st c.) and by auditory sensitivity (e.g.: “noise pollution”). Although more often than not neglected colours play an essential part in informing the sensorial landscape, as they are important to commercial (tourism) or esthetical views (reconstruction/rehabilitation of historical buildings and cultural heritage). By adopting an historical perspective, it may be possible to question the contemporary sensitivity and the way it informs public policies. On the other hand a heuristic application of the modern notion of environment can also shed new light on pre-modern societies.

Proposals of max. 1 page/200 words, including a short bio-bibliography, should be submitted by email in French or in English by November 30, 2010

to:
robert.beck@wanadoo.fr
ulrike.krampl@univ-tours.fr
emmanuelle.retaillaud-bajac@univ-tours.fr

Talks are limited to 20 minutes. A written version of the paper should be addressed to the organizers by April 25, 2011, in order to make a reader available to the participants during the conference. Publication of selected conference papers is planned.

Organization:
Robert Beck, Ulrike Krampl, Emmanuelle Retaillaud-Bajac
Université François-Rabelais de Tours – France
CeRMAHVA/Equipe “Histoire des villes”