Content area
Full text
Simon Hajdini. What's That Smell? A Philosophy of the Olfactory. Edited by Mladen Dolar, Alenka Zupancic, and Slavoj iek. The MIT Press, 2024. 216 pp- $29.95 paperback.
What's That Smell? A Philosophy of the Olfactory delves into the significance of smell within human experience and culture. By employing an interdisciplinary approach at the intersection of modern philosophy and psychoanalysis, and utilizing case studies akin to those in literary studies, the book offers new perspectives on a sense often overlooked by modern philosophy: the sense of smell. Largely indebted to Jacques Lacan, Hajdini goes further than merely developing A Philosophy of the Olfactory, as implied by the title; he constructs a form of olfactory structuralism. By using the demonstrative "that" in the title, the author implies a positioning of smell out there, at a distance, as well as its irrepressibility, because regardless of how concealed or distant it may be, one perceives "that" smell. Both distance and irrepressibility are established in relation to a subject and its idea of truth, both of which are significant topics in Hajdini's book.
Keywords: smell / psychoanalysis / Jacques Lacan / philosophy / structuralism / Patrick Suskind
What's That Smell? A Philosophy of the Olfactory by Simon Hajdini (2024) is one of the latest books in the Short Circuits series, published by MIT Press since 2003 and edited by Mladen Dolar, Alenka Zupancic, and Slavoj Zizek. Positioned at the crossroads of philosophy and psychoanalysis, via one of the series' prominent authors, Jacques Lacan, Hajdini's book delves into the role of smell in human experience and culture. It not only explores traditional and modern philosophical and psychoanalytic perspectives, but also examines the topic through the lens of literature.
Starting from Shakespeare, advancing through G.W.F. Hegel, Sigmund Freud, Roman Jakobson, and Lacan, while drawing upon the fundamental philosophies of Aristotle and Plato, the Slovenian philosopher argues that the absence of linguistic representation for smells-hence their anomia-results in labels that correspond to other senses, such as "sweet" for taste or "loud" for hearing. This phenomenon is not only widespread in Indo-European languages, but also indicative of universal "lexical voids" (3).
One of the most illustrative examples, frequently revisited throughout the book, is that of Grenouille, the serial killer protagonist of Patrick Süskind's...