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. (more…)