Sensory History PDF

Producing Sense, Consuming Sense, Making Sense: Perils and Prospects for Sensory History
Author(s): Mark M. Smith

Source: Journal of Social History, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Summer, 2007), pp. 841-858
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25096396 .
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SECTION I
HISTORY OF THE SENSES
PRODUCING
SENSE, COMSUMING
SENSE, MAKING
SENSE: PERILS AND PROSPECTS FOR SENSORY HISTORY
M.
By Mark
Can You Hear,
Smith
of South Carolina
University
See, Smell, Taste, Touch Me, Now?
to be a sensory historian.
It is a good moment
referred
history?also
Sensory
to as the history of the senses,
sensate history, and sensuous
history?is
booming
is a nearly
H. Roeder,
that "ours
historians.
senseless
among
Jr.'s claim
George
or so later, sensory
was
true when
he wrote
it; now, a decade
history
profession"
isbrimmingwith promise, somuch so that recent bangs will likely prove, upon
reflection,
prefatory
whispers,
smells,
anticipatory
whiffs,
mere
touches,
caresses,
is a rapidly growing
tastes, alluring nibbles, and sights just glimmers in what
"field."1
In that delightful anticipation, though, problems loom, especially concern

and
ing methodology
In part,
presentation.
the dangers
are
of
product
the
very speed with which sensoryhistory has gained ground, particularly in a spate
on U.S.
of work
some
past,
taste the
In the rush to see, hear,
and
smell,
touch,
history.
its practitioners
have
careful
with
the
engagement
hop-scotched
and empirical
result is an often under
insights of related work. The
of
conceptual
theorized field of inquiry,more empirically fleshed out than intellectually con

sidered.
Sensory
history
historicization
appropriate
ical past.
In the midst
ventures
one
in two directions,
currently
a usable
of the senses,
the other positing
of the
a space
to pause,
offers a place
we
might
go.2
This
three aims.
essay has
the methodological
recent
in which
First,
an
offering
but ahistor
studies,
flurry of sensory history
to evaluate
where we are now
it defines
sensory
history,
explains
this essay
and where
some
of
and interpretive problems facing historians of the senses,
offers a rough,
trellis for future sensory histories.
In so doing,
it
interpretive
to historicize
to create
the senses and resist the temptation
that we need
argues
and
a usable but ahistorical sensory past. I argue that if sensoryhistory is to realize

its full promise, we need to distinguish between the production and consump
tion of the senses. While
the past,
different
to reproduce,
it is possible
sound from
say, a particular
the way we understand,
"consume"
is radically
that sound
experience,
to the way
in content
in
and meaning
the
understood
and
past
people
experienced it. Failure to distinguish between sensory production (something

that
can,
at
least
theoretically,
be
replicated
in the present)
and
sensory
con
sumption (something that ishostage to the context inwhich itwas produced)

betrays
the promise
of sensory
history.
In short, we
must
be

careful
always
to
842
summer 2007
journal of social history
is best
how
the essay considers
the senses.
Second,
sensory history
Is print,
the traditional
historical
up to the
monograph,
presented
by scholars.
to
histories
of smell,
task of presenting
taste, and touch or do we need
sound,
our
to
embrace
new, non-print
Third,
convey
effectively
findings?
technologies
historicize
es
to the promise
of sensory history
for U.S.
historians,
noting
a
more
us
access
in
to?and
offers
the
which
topic grants
deeper
pecially
between
the senses and moder
of?the
relationship
understanding
complicated
the senses, emotion,
and metaphor.
between
space,
nity and the connections
the essay
points
the way
this essay is framed in termsof "U.S" history, I do not mean to claim
Although
American
or to suggest
distinctiveness
historical
sensory
is
the nation-state
that
the only appropriate analytic location for sensoryhistory. In fact, I think itvery
likely indeed that futurework will rightlydeal with sensory histories that are
to the nation-state.
external
Indeed,
some
poorly
when
recent
on
work
delimited
function
categories
the
sensory
aspects
it clear that nationally
of what Paul Gilroy has termed "race thinking" make
to come
attempting
to terms with
ideas that transcend geographic boundaries.3 That much said, many of today's
came
to their senses,
of sensory history
In this regard, framing
the senses
practitioners
as
particular
as historians
itwere,
a national
within
country.
of a
idiom?
understandable and, for the purposes of this

albeit French, British, or U.S.?is
essay, helps us understand why writing on U.S. sensoryhistory has usually been
within
conceptualized
larger national
the
framework.
Sensory Histories
First, some brief definitions. Some historians refer to "the history of the
to "sensory
similar
often mean
others
senses,"
things. Histori
history."
They
sense
in and
ans of the senses have mostly
of a particular
the evolution
traced
of itself.Histories of hearing, forexample, tend to examine how the intellectual

medical
and
especially
over
evolved
time
the ecumenical,
and
cultural
sensory
understanding
and
place.
considering
construction
and
is also
history
Sensory
not only
ear
of hearing?the
does
history
the
same
as physiology?has
but tends towards
sense but its social

of a given
the history
itsmost powerful,
in texturing
the past. At
to elucidate
historians
by reference
allowing
its role
explanatory,
to both visual and non-visual senses something thatmakes

as a scopic
if understood
simply
the role of the senses?including
little or less sense
Sensory
history,
phenomenon.
treatments
of sight and
explicit
in short,
vision?in
stresses
shap
ingpeoples' experience of the past, shows how theyunderstood theirworlds and
why, and
are some
spect,
is (or, at least,
sort of "natural"
sensory
should
be)
endowment,
a habit
is more
history
very
not
careful
unchangeable
of thinking
to assume
and
about
that
the past,
the
senses
In this
constant.4
a
re
technique
used to investigate and understand rather than a carefully delimited field of in

quiry. What
are
usually
considered
history
"fields"?diplomatic,
gender,
race,
all be written and re

regional, borderlands, cultural, political, military?could
habit
of
the
searched through
sensoryhistory.
Perhaps the chief, distinguishing feature of sensoryhistory is itsexplicit treat
ment
tastes,
of the
and
senses.
touches
Of
course,
lots of historians
in their narratives
but
such
mention
invocations
sights, sounds,
are usually
smells,
in the
service of literaryflourishes and, as such, conceptually flaccid. Playful reference

PRODUCING SENSE,COMSUMING SENSE,MAKING SENSE

or sound
to a smell
a sensory
not
does
(just as a study of antebellum
make
history
slaverywhich casually referstoAbraham Lincoln
U.S.
the senses
In fact,
raphy).
of the
invoking
and accuracy
legitimacy
smelled
ple, who
taste was
whose
was
was
and whose
ishardly political biog
invite
uncritical
acceptance
of, for exam
was beautiful,
characterizations
of contemporary
who
inodorate,
was
and who
refined
can
in this way
843
was
ugly
whose
common,
and who
skin was
and
delicate
noise
and who made
for hard
sound.
labor, who made
enough
surren
to an unwitting
to the senses can amount
reference
Such
breezy,
implicit
near
to repeating
structures
of the past and comes
der to the power
perilously
whose
leathery
them. Historians
who
quote
of
filth and smell are intolerable"?leave
was
the description
that
impression
characterization
observer's
nineteenth-century
immigranthomes as reeking?"The
and
objectively
the
we
"true." What
universally
reallyneed to know iswhose nose was doing the smelling, how the definition of
"smell" changed over time and according to constituency (did the people living
in the "filth"agree?), and how the characterization was used to justifyactions by
class
middle
on
reformers.
Absent
such
the terms
set by the reformer's

in that nose.5
inhered
the most
For
nose
we
commentary,
explicit
and all of the prejudices
in the sensate
interested
part, Americanists
the past
present
and values
that
have
been
ex
fairly
plicit about their topic and U.S. historians of all periods have recently produced
a number
on
of works
senses.
the
Our
of colonial
understanding
America
has
been enriched considerably by, for example, JaneKamensky's 1998 study,Gov

an
astute
the spoken
word.
erning
the Tongue,
power,
and
investigation
As with most
of
the
recent
between
relationship
work,
Kamensky's
gender,
is
emphasis
on orality/aurality,not taste, hence the book's subtitle,The Politics of Speech in

EarlyNew England. Richard Cullen Rath's path-breaking examination of sound
ways inHow Early America Sounded (2003) is along similar lines but pays much
more
attention
to "paralinguistic,"
non-vocal
More
sounds.
am
and
recently
bitiously, Peter Charles Hoffer investigates all five senses in SensoryWorlds of

EarlyAmerica (2003), an importantbook worth careful consideration (I will say
much more about thework byRath and Hoffer shortly).And John E. Crowley's
study of sensibility
and material
in early modern
culture
Britain
and America,
The InventionofComfort (2001), necessarily engages the senses, especially how

people saw light and dark. For the late eighteenth century and early republic,
Leigh Eric Schmidt has written a very important study of aurality and religion
illustrating the enduring importance of aurality to evangelical Christianity. In
Schmidt's
hands,
the moment
remain
sound
when
central
ity was
visual
to the conversion
supposed
to have
experience
And
triumphed.
at precisely
own ef
my
fort,Listening toNineteenth-CenturyAmerica (2001), examines the evolution of

antebellum
the operations
sectionalism,
of southern
slavery,
the emergence
of
northern freewage labor, the fighting of the Civil War, and events of Recon
struction
what
by exploring
contemporaries
considered
"keynote"
sounds.
Late
nineteenth-nineteenth noise has been studied by Raymond Smilor, while Lisa

Gitelman,
Sterne,
Jonathan
sounds,
tieth
acoustemology,
centuries.6
Very
so-called
few Americanists
"lower,"
and Emily Thompson

and modernity
aurality,
proximate
in a variety of ways,
examine,
in the late nineteenth
and twen
to engage
and
taste, touch,
begun
senses. Such
inattention
is unfortunate
have

smell?the
because
it
844
summer 2007
has
Western
the post-Platonic,
sensory hierarchy
tacitly
imported
promoting
senses of hearing
into the field.
and, especially,
seeing,
supposedly
"higher"
Y. Chiang's
Connie
article on odor, ethnicity,
and social conflict
2004
tourism,
the
in the 1880s and 1930s isan exception and a notable effortseeking
inCalifornia
to redress
the
Moreover,
imbalance.7
from much
missing
of this work
is engagement
and
the
dialogue,
absence perhaps a function ofhow quickly and widely the field isbeing produced.
As
David
anthropologist
has
Howes
suggested,
scholars
of the senses
sometimes
feel they are working in isolation and the "need to invent the studyof the senses
from scratch." Such a belief ispotentially damaging. Itnot only denies us oppor
tunities
and
for theoretical
empirical
it also
cross-fertilization,
unneces
invites
saryduplication and remains deaf as well as blind to important interpretive in
in other
sights generated
by scholars
full potential,
of the senses
historians
informed
This
conversations.8
essay
If we are to realize
sensory history's
to start having
and
sustained,
candid,
to initiate
that dialogue.
fields.
need
tries
Perils
evaluation
Any
of sensory
history
by U.S.
historians
engages
necessarily
Peter
Charles Hoffer's pioneering, award-winning book, SensoryWorlds ofEarlyAmer

ica.Hoffer's is the first
U.S. historywork to deal with all of the senses, examining
even caused,
taste influenced,
in early
how
behavior
smell, touch,
sight, sound,
of
His
the invisible
the study considers
America.
range is impressive:
experience
in seventeenth-century
of the
the aurality
and visuality
the supernatural
Salem,
1739 South Carolina Stono slave rebellion, themediated and conflicted nature
of sensory encounters
of the American
aspects
and Native
between
Americans,
is a lot to recommend
Europeans
There
Revolution.
It is elegant,
robust, ambitious,
ical importance
of the senses.
it invites
and
careful
and
sensory
Hoffer's
study.
of the histor
consideration
The
also raises some fundamental
book
questions
a history of the senses.
to go about
It is, in short, a work we need
as
to take very seriously,
noted.9
key reviews have
to lead sen
book
threatens
In some fundamental
Hoffer's
respects, however,
about
best
how
in an unprofitable,
sory history
conceptually
withered
direction.
This
is a brac
ing charge and warrants detailed explanation. I hasten to add thatHoffer isnot
alone. While his work might be themost pronounced example of what I con
sider perilous
sensory
history,
his
conceptual
missteps
"From
all evidences,
are also
evident,
albeit
in
more muted form, in several other works. First, though,Hoffer's SensoryWorlds

ofEarly America.
Hoffer
starts off on firm

ground:
the report
of the senses
was of immense importance to the people who lived in earlyAmerica. It should

be so to historians." Indeed. Quickly, though,Hoffer's thinking becomes spongy.
he
Although
tion,"
that
iswell
aware
the number
that
of senses
"the
very
possessed
idea of the senses

by humans
has
is a cultural
changed
conven
over
time,
and that themeaning and ranking of the senses had been subject tomuch debate
during antiquity and the Enlightenment, he nevertheless posits sensoryhistory
a project
"Can we
as essentially
in the recovery
of a usable,
consumable
past.10
we have
our senses
to replicate
in a world
lost?" asks
sensation
(almost)
more
the
is yes," he says, "and perhaps
"I think the answer
Hoffer.
important,
use


is worth
project
their senses and
unrecoverable
the effort." He
"used
that past actors
from our own as to be
the argument
so different
considers
in a way
the world
perceived
now" mere
At
"caveat."
work
here
845
is an
about
assumption
how
history can and should be used in the present. "A sensoryhistory should convey
to the
can
the feel of the past,"

others
long ago
reader
"recover
what
he maintains,
and
and
saw, heard,
that we
is convinced
he
smelled."11
Hoffer elaborates his case thoughtfullyand carefully in a section entitled "Go
in Time."
Here,
ing Back
ate sensory experiences
to "approximate
the immedi
says that it is possible
so entails
in the past and that doing
the re
he
of people"
of a sensory
and (re)consumption
production
the
"If we assume
that we have
Hoffer:
also
"event"
same
and
Writes
"experience."
apparatus
perceptual
the world
as
the
as they did, we are

in the past, and can sense
studying
to
our
the past
the same
closer
step
experiencing
objective,"
namely,
nature
of the universal
"we" and
way as "they" did (more on the problematic
sensible
remarks
the historically
and cul
later). Hoffer's
earlier,
regarding
"they"
nature
of
should have
the extravagance
of the senses
tempered
turally mediated
we
people
another
are
this claim
someone
(would
today who
the same
shared
nose
physiological
as, say,
an antebellum slaveholder, also think that black people stink?) But itdoes not.
version
In fact, Hoffer's
of sensory history becomes
even
in the ways historians
conduct
for changes
increasingly
research.
He
radical,
considers
calling
schol
ars "hunched fordays over the flaking, yellowed pages of parchment rolls in the
notes with
scribbling
aching
we are better off if "we
archives,"
sory past." No,

museums
living
the historical
book
his
that
dot
reenactors
that many
recognition
to "recapture
that sen
to the
their parents
and
our
he
the difference
"knew
digits, unlikely
follow children
Hoffer's
that he and
argument
country."
Despite
encountered
the course
of researching
his
during
between
the original
and the re-enaction,"
despite
sites
"sell
a vision
of historical
sometimes
process,"
highly distorted, he firmlybelieves that "living museums" and "commercial re

creations
of the past
then
now."12
and
and
popular
re-enactments"
can
"close
the gap
between
Hoffer gives examples. On July 1, 1998, Clinton Wakefield Epps took part in
a massive reenactment of the 1863 battle ofGettysburg. The actual (1863) sol
diers
an
to Hoffer's
according
reading of their evidence,
event.
recollections
describe
Letters,
diaries,
at Gettysburg,
intense
sensory
experienced
the heat,
the
noise, the smell, the feel of battle, with bullets ripping flesh or, if lucky,whizzing
by ears. Did
Mr.
Epps
or any of the other
reenactors
come
near
to experiencing,
recapturing the sensoryGettysburg of 1863 in 1998?They dressed in replica uni
forms
(some
reenactors
do not wash
their uniforms
for years
in effort
to capture
the smell of the time), carried the same equipment, and fought in the same for
mations. And Mr. Epps even felt the event: during the course ofGettysburg '98,
a bullet was fired into his neck (someone had inadvertently loaded a lead ball
in a pistol; Mr. Epps later recovered). For Hoffer, all of this?the bullet in the
to approximate
how
the "re-enactment
could
especially?showed
begin
is rooted
in his own
the past reality." Hoffer's
second
illustration
experience,
a sort of
encounter
recounts
with past sensations.
Hoffer
how, during
personal
on the witchcraft
his research
trials in colonial
he "jour
Salem, Massachusetts,
flesh
neyed
to Danvers,
the
site of many
of the
supposed
bewitchings."
Standing
in
themiddle of a field,Hoffer started to think about "Satan and all his evil works,"

846
summer 2007
the "night sounds," dogs barking, leaves rustling,all making him believe he was
experiencing the past.When all is said and done, "when all the qualifications
are
entered
the
interpreters
of the world
more
the caveats
all
and
and
the
we
travels
have
filed, the re-recreations

to historical
sites do
lost."13
the production
of the past to its present-day
to
recreate
the sound of a hammer
possible
In effect, Hoffer
wrongly marries
it is perfectly
While
consumption.
the re-enactments,
us to sense a little
and
enable
hitting an anvil from 1812, or a piece ofmusic from 1880 (especially ifwe still
have the score and original instruments), or the smell of horse dung from 1750
(I image that, chemically, the reproduction is feasible), it is impossible to con
sume,
hammer
and
to experience
or music,
fetid
to,
the
say,
they were
how
and
perceived
as
way
the dung, or experienced

1850
southern
slaveholder's
day not least because that world?the

and
same
in the
sensations
those
those
who
heard
the
was
What
Gettysburg.
nose
is not
recoverable
smelled
rank
to
world that shaped what smells existed
understood
constituencies?has
by multiple
evaporated. Even the reproducibility of past sensations should not be taken for
granted. One wonders how much the sight of jet planes overhead, the rhyth
mic throb of distant traffic,the accidental application of 1990s aftershave on a
"Union"
soldier,
the
accountant
of the "Confederate"
the soft hands
sword,
production
taste of a Shoney's
lingering
breakfast,
and
his re
holding
a host of other
modern elements that existed in 1998 but not in 1863 hamper the actual "repro
duction"
of climate,
not to mention
of Gettysburg,
time, and history?acoustic
those
shadows.
accidents
unique
irreproducible,
it this:
But the essential
point
if itwere a carefully preserved

whatever Mr. Epps felt as the lead bullet?even
was
not
in
into
his
neck
1998
what theGettysburg soldier
original?burrowed
felt
in 1863
even
because
though
Mr.
Epps
have
might
the
same
ap
"sensory
paratus" as the 1863 solider, the context and meaning has changed sufficiently
since 1863 that he cannot experience the bullet in the same way. Not only has
of pain
the meaning
changed?-Mr.
Epps'
are
for his pain
references
comparative
radically different to those of the similarly injured (1863) soldier?but our ex
pectation
for successful
greater
There
than
portance
of
that available
to end
and our ability
recovery
to the poor
soul in 1863.14
experience
as Hoffer
here. Even
additional
danger
American
of the colonial
the plurality
of African
and Native
women,
Americans,
nationalist
sensory
is an
or dull
the pain
ismuch
stresses
correctly
experience,
Americans;
the
im
the
rescuing
even
as he
rightlycalls fora carefully differentiatedhistory, one that delineates the specific

experiences of particular groups beyond theGreat White Male; even as he aims
to take us beyond the nationalist narrative of the 1950s, he ends up replacing a
narrative
with
a universalist
one
in which
"we,"
all of "us"
in
the present, can "experience" the past just as each, highly differentiated group
did.15
So, why go to all of this trouble of visiting livingmuseums, trying to "expe
rience" battles, standing in fields at night? "By engaging in sensoryhistory we
can
stimulate
our
powers
of
imagination
to their
fullest
extent,"
answers
Hof
fer,explaining: "Such histories of the senses would fulfillthe highest purpose of

historical
scholarship:
to make
the past
live again."16
Should the aim of sensoryhistory be tomake the past come "alive"? Hoffer
plainly
thinks
we
can more
readily
experience
and
enliven
the past

by
repro
PRODUCING SENSE, COMSUMING SENSE,MAKING SENSE

sensory
ducing
it. This
of
aspects
claim
unnerves
me
for two
847
reasons.
First,
am far from convinced that history is, in fact, dead. Second, I fear that should
sensoryhistory lend credibility to this conceit, itwill have succumbed to soci
etal
pressures
of everything
the consumption
urging
we
(or reproduce),
produce
including the past. Instead, sensory history holds the promise of radically his
toricizing the past, of reminding us how very contingent it is,of rescuing history
fromcommodification. As David Howes has recently remarked, although "em
sensuous
ploying
has
description
charm
particular
to enliven
for those wishing
the dry bones of history and put readers 'in touch' with the past," the "history
...
in its fullest
itmakes
sense
senses
of the
terpretive:
development,
of the past?through
is not
only evocative?it
the analysis
of sensory
in
is also
practices
and ideologies."17 If they are to properly historicize the senses, historians could
do worse
than
...
Presenting
Hoffer's
to listen
to anthropologists.
Sensory
History
work
important
raises not
just phenomenological
but close
questions
ly related presentational ones. The problem is this: can sensory historians rely
on print alone to accurately present theirwork to readers?Asks Hoffer: "Even if
historians
can
ancestors,
can
is what
Hoffer
savor
the
thrown
I am
themselves
satisfy
they convey
calls a version
saying
sensory
past
of the "lemon
immediate
away
they can
that
that
experience
the fruit, but can
of my
senses;
recover
the sensory
to their auditors
and
"I can
problem":
I can recall
world
taste
the
of their
This
readers?"
a lemon
taste
after
and
I have
to
I use words
and pictures
what
fully understand
to get at the reality behind
Hoffer
thinks we
my words?"
to readers.18
of the taste of a lemon
something
or, rather,
can
reliably convey
Let us radically
empower
Hoffer's
argument
by
imagining
that we
could
actu
ally reproduce the taste of a lemon; that, courtesy of the gas liquid chromatog
rapher (a machine able to reproduce flavors), JohnHopkins University Press,
which published Hoffer's book, reproduced a small square of lickable paper im
mediately following his paragraph about the taste of lemons. Thus, Hoffer is
relieved of his main epistemological and phenomenological problem: the reader
licks the square
and experiences
what Hoffer
simply
experienced.
a lemon
on the tongue
tastes is contingent
Or does he or she? How
doing
the
licking, its specific history and culture. After all, cultural and historical speci
all of the senses.

ficity shapes
Britons
and Americans?united
tastes of modern
for example,
the olfactory
a
common
it
but separated
seems,
by
heritage,
Take,
by a differentnose. Two studies?one performed in the 1960s in theU.K, the

other a decade later in theU.S.?found
that Brits disliked the smell ofmethyl
salicylate (wintergreen) while Americans loved it.Notwithstanding the prob
accounts
lematical
of "British"
and "American,"
historical
categories
specificity
a
in
scent of
for the learned preference:
the
the
among
U.K,
generation
particular
was associated
and ointments
with medicine
used during
the Sec
wintergreen
ond World War (not the best of times). Conversely, wintergreen in the U.S.
is the olfactory cognate not of medicine but of candy (a minty smell?or so I
am told). And this is just in the recent past. Imagine trying to recapture the
"taste"
of a
to encounter
lemon
sugar
from,
tasted
who
had yet
say, the fourteenth
century when
people
in ways
food
that would
be different
after sugar had

848
summer 2007
been introduced to their diet. Thus, the taste of a lemon is far fromhistorically
or
constant
culturally
and
how
Jimmy Buffet-laden
margarita,
it tastes,
its meaning,
is dependent
signature,
or
its salivating
sharpness
on many
factors, the not
least ofwhich ishistory.19Lickable text, scratch-and sniffpages, touch-and-feel

offer
pads
"We"
the historian
and
reader
alike modest
returns.
heuristic
same holds true for all historical evidence, visual and aural included.
The
do not
light, with
in the same
the engraving
of a slave whipping
from the 1830s
same meaning,
as
with
the same emotional
the aboli
intensity
"see"
the
tionist did at the time; what themodern New Yorker considers a "tall" build
ing is not what
most
thoughtful
the medieval
work
considered
peasant
in this regard. Despite
European
sometimes
slips
tall.20
even
But
his own
careful
the
en
gagement with printed evidence investigating the sounds and ways of hearing in
earlymodern England, Bruce R. Smith?a professor of English and author of the
extraordinarily innovative The Acoustic World ofEarlyModern England (1999)?
in the sounds
that "For an historian
of the past, there would
interested
suggests
seem to be
to
at
there
until
the
of electromagnetic
least
advent
nothing
study,
recording devices in the early twentieth century." But Smith surelyknows bet
that we
ter. Imagine
plantation
ings of slaves
in 1830,
singing,
could
fidelity the sounds of, say, a southern

access
to electromagnetic
had
record
utter
with
we
that, somehow,
masters
shouting,
soil, whispered
thumping
lences. What
would
the
enable
hear
us to understand
overseers
and
conversations,
actual
of
reproduction
that conventional,
hoes
ranting, whips
cracking,
a thousand
other
sounds?and
direct
those
and
sounds,
indirect
si
in the present,
written
evidence
from the people who experienced or (ear) witnessed those sounds do not? Very
little indeed.While the reproduction of the sounds might give us the (false)
we call "alive,"
our act of listening
to the
is something
that history
impression
are more
is itself an act of consumption.
sounds
inter
Historians
reproduced
in the meaning
ested
the slaves,
the masters,
the plantation
northern
visitors,
to these sounds. How
and a whole
host of contemporaries
attached
abolitionists,
these people listened isnot only more important than what theyheard but, in
The
what
sound of the whip,
the slaves' midnight
fact, constitutes
they heard.
to
work
the
held
such
different
song,
meanings
radically
whispers,
plantation
in the past
constituencies
that we can understand
(and
multiple
interrogate)
the sounds only on the terms described
by those constituencies.21
Perhaps
As
now, more
reproductive
than
auditory
ever, we
technologies
need
to think
advance
carefully
(whether
about
as online
such matters.
files or
audio
as compact disks tucked into book pockets) and as they begin to affect the way
historians
readers
to think about
do well
their work, we would
present
to take away from this
form
of
presentation.
supplemental
what
Shane
we
want
White
and Graham White's recent book The Sounds of Slavery (2005), forexample, in
cludes "an 18-trackCD of historic recordings" of ex-slave songs recorded in the
1930s (not, obviously, during slavery itself).Beacon Press, the book's publisher,
"is the closest modern
listeners will ever
the text and, especially,
the CD
the diverse
sounds
that surrounded
slave
life." These
songs
get to experience
that has been
silent for too
"lets us hear,
for the first time, a complex
history
in Hofferian
of slav
allow
"us" to "experience"
the "history"
fashion,
long" and,
to remember?and
to make
it is critical
for authors
clear?that
when
ery. But
claims


we
are not
we
to the CD
listen
not
slavery
hearing
just because
the meaning
southern
antebellum
to slave
attached
contemporaries
as well?to
the CD
than
slavery
it does
"Our"
songs.
tells us more
antebellum
about
reaction?highly
our own
about
tracks were
the
cannot convey
recorded in the 1930s and not the 1830s but because the CD
differentiated,
849
of
understanding
itself. Even
slavery
the presentation of history in this form?a CD filled with some very beauti
ful songs sung byAfrican Americans in the 1930s?necessarily distorts in im
portant ways the texture and range of the aural world of antebellum southern
to present
decision
the past
slavery. The
the history
of southern
slavery necessarily
in this fashion
an
act
makes
"experiencing"
read
When
of consumption.
ers/auditorsplay theCD, they expect to hear "something," even though a good

deal of the history of slavery had nothing to do with the audible, heard world.
Quietude,
silences,
attempted
important.
equally
John Cage
the rustles
whispers,
fans notwithstanding,
of the escaping
a CD
of quiet,
slave,
were
in
murky,
distinct sounds (noise?) would hardly sell as well as songs.Of necessity, the form
of evidentiary
in this case
presentation
necessarily
the slave
privileges
song over
the barely audible but equally meaningful and significantmurmur, whisper, or
rustle.
Likewise with the pioneering work ofConstance Classen, David Howes, and
Anthony Synnott who conclude their study,Aroma: The Cultural History of
Smell, with the observation that "We do not know what the past smelled like"
"cannot
smells
because
be
The
persevered."
curious
here?a
assumption
one
given thewonderful attention to the need to historicize smell in the rest of the
book?is
quite
a scent can be
it is
that unless
suggests
preserved
to the historian
In fact, smells are accessible
inquiry.
in spite of?most
written
of smells from the
descriptions
and
mistaken
to historical
subject
because?not
precisely
not
past tells us what smells smelled like.22

In other
is, I think,
words,
still an
sensory
effective
careful
past. Through
can readily grasp what
individuals
and groups
and
on print.
not give up too
It
quickly
for conveying
the sensory meanings
of the
we
with
considered
evidence,
engagement
printed
history
medium
should
or stimuli meant
to particular
sensory events
particular
contexts.
in particular
is no small irony here.
If the
There
in fact, elevate
the eye and denigrate
the nose,
ear, tongue,
did,
print revolution
and the sensory perceptions
and skin, printed
evidence
raries constitute
medium
the principal
through which
of the past and their meanings.
recorded
we
can
by contempo
access
the senses
Prospects
Some
most
of the most
theorized,
promising
carefully
on
work
the
senses
and
conceptualized,
is also
by Americanists
situated.
historiographically
the
For
example, Richard Cullen Rath's How Early American Sounded refinesour under
standing of a debate inwhich Europeanists have long been engaged: whether
modernity
the ear"
a transition
nursed
to an
"age
from,
in Lucien
of the eye," whether
the
Febvre's
invention
an "age
and moveable
formulation,
of print
of
type, the Enlightenment, the interest in perspective and balance, eclipsed the
value
and
significance
of nonvisual
senses.
The
argument
and

historiography
is
850
summer 2007

more
much
of course,
complex,
but
I think
it fair
to say
that
this bracketing
ofmodern/visual, premodern/nonvisual ismost often associated with Marshall

McLuhan andWalter Ong, both of whom did much to help us historicize an
often unwitting privileging of sight. In arguing fora shift in the ratio or balance
of the senses, both Ong and McLuhan helped us see that sightwas historically
contingent.
script man
Ong
expressed
ismore
oral-aural
it simply when
he wrote,
"before
the invention
and that "greater
than afterward"
visualism"
of print.23
Rath
that we must
argues
terms and, to that end, How
early Americans
experienced
product
treat
in resolutely
the history
of sound
America
Sounded
the ways
Early
explores
and understood
and vocal
paralinguistic
Broadly,
historical
in which
as well
sounds
examines
as silence.
the
He
treats
the seventeenth
and eighteenth
and
century
of European,
African
American,
in which
they interacted.
and
acoustemologies
soundways
and the ways
American
cultures
and Native
Rath
Throughout,
ity, aurality,
visuality,
engages
of
is a
the debate
and modernity.
oral
concerning
literacy, print culture,
not
necessar
is
For Rath,
aurality/orality
ily in tension with literacy?he considers belief in the tension itselfa modern
convention and one hardly recognizable to the people he studies. But Rath is
in quiet but firmagreement with McLuhan's essential insights, insisting, "early
the world more
and
their ears than we do today"
through
came closer
to saturating North
that as "literacy
and printed matter
... attention
was drawn
from the realm of sound
and
minds
away
Americans
sensed
maintaining
Americans'
to the visible world."24

in order to give more
speech
treatment
of the sensate past is fundamentally
Rath's
like
sounds,
thunder,
physically
sounded
much
to Hoffer's.
different
have already listened to Hoffer sensing; now, listen to Rath

same
the
We
listening: "Some
as
in early America
they do now." The wording here is slippery and begs the question, towhom? He
were
is an entirely
goes on: "But how
they
perceived
a
matter
to historical
is
of historical
and
contingencies,
different
matter,
inquiry."
subject
Indeed.
Here,
Rath rightly identifies the impossibility of trying to experience and consume

those
that were
of the past, holding

the special
provenance
radically
for contemporaries
than they do for "us." "Our bells, drums,
meanings
to their seventeenth-century
similar
fiddles may
still sound
counterparts,"
sounds
different
and
writes Rath, "but theirmeanings and social contexts have changed them from
of cultural
cohesion
elements
important
Rath
entertainment."
fully appreciates
sensory
is a telling phrase,
"merely
of reconstituted,
consumable
to," and here

the dangers
history.25
But perhaps Rath does not go far enough. After all, his work accepts, albeit
the fundamental
caveats,
intelligent
more work on
As
and
McLuhan
Ong.
by
with
modern/premodern
lower
the so-called
model
postulated
senses
or proximate
of smell, touch, and taste isproduced, I suspect that the binary will come under
increasing
must
avoid
times
fail
up
new
by
strain
and
leaning
to capture
research.
twentieth-century
lose
gradually
on
too heavily
the complexity
For
white
its explanatory
effectiveness.
history
Sensory
that some
frameworks
such meta-historical
of events,
where
example,
who
southerners
do
trends,
those
believed
and
that
thrown
tendencies
late nineteenththey could
and
use,
early
for ex
ample, their sense of smell to detect racial identityfit?The prevailing wisdom,


the argument
the rise of modernity
that
empowered
the eye and
851
the
denigrated
other senses (especially that of smell), has trouble explaining the enduring im
senses
to racial constructions
of the proximate
work on vision
As
recent,
suggests,
explicit
portance
in the modern
period
sight was not the stable,

as
sense at the end of the nineteenth
historical
century
objective
overarching
on
assume
and white
southern
relied
their
models
suppos
segregationists
heavily
generally.
noses
at century's
vision.
In fact,
end to complement
animal-like
edly "lower,"
the thoroughly
modern
racial categorization,
group
system of segregation?of
in
of the "modern")?was
hallmarks
(all accepted
ing, demarcation
necessarily
debted to, and stabilized by, the putatively premodern senses of smell, touch,
taste, and hearing. This should remind historians not to let the model drive
refine old
the interpretation
and to allow new evidence
help
to cast
will resist the temptation
works.
Such
reformulations
explanative
the lower
frame
senses
as
premodern and sight as modern and will likely show how the proximate senses
were
in particular
and
contexts,
and,
promiscuous
proved
temporally
imported
to bolster modernity.
resurrected
it is worth
how
else sensory his
conclusion,
By way of extended
pondering
some con
I think, recognize
evolve. Americanists
that escaping
will,
tory might
ventions will not mean dispensing with all of them. Although

bracketing
proximate
senses
profitably,
examining
the non-visual
is plainly
emotion
and
a convention
the argument
of Enlighten
ment thinking, several historians of the senses have already employed the idea
senses
as conduits
power and depth of emotional, visceral behavior. While

saw
can
seeing
also
and
explain
emotional
of
balance,
behavior,
sight with
reason,
for understanding
the
stressingwhat people
association
the Enlightenment
vision
with
truth?"perspective"?
with
intellectualized and segregated the eye from the presumed disruptive vicissi
to
For the eye to be trusted,
it had
of smell,
and taste especially.
touch,
and balanced
less sus
reasonable,
rational,
and, fundamentally,
steadfastly
senses. Careful
to emotion
to how
attention
the other
than
ceptible
people
senses
to process
ex
the other
used
information
and meaning,
therefore,
helps
tudes
be
or chaotic
at eye level, seem
what might,
irrational
but that, understood
sense. Alain
another
inno
Corbin's
sense, makes
through
perfect, well,
highly
as much
to
vative work
I suspect,
and will,
historians
prove
suggests
important
was part and
in nineteenth-century
of the U.S.
Olfaction
France
of a
parcel
one not quite
or understandable
in purely visual
accessible
history of emotion,
plain
terms.As Corbin puts it: "Emphasizing the fetidityof the laboring classes, and
thus the danger of infection from theirmere presence, helped the bourgeois to
sustain
his
self-indulgent,
self-induced
terror, which
dammed
up
the expression
of remorse." So too with the sound of bells. In Village Bells: Sound and Mean
ing in theWth-Century French Countryside, Corbin argued that the sounds of
bells to particular groups held an emotional meaning that went deeper than
even music and could illicit reactions thatwould be largelyunintelligible to?
and hidden from?a wholly visualist history.Wrote Corbin: "Finally, we have
come
occasion
in this
to realize
and
regard
emotional
bells
power
just what
rise to or expressed
rejoicing.
gave
than
were
'rough music'
or
the
an
Peals
solemnized
possessed.
were
far more
effective
They
charivari.
Any
collective
emo
tion that ran deep involved use of a bell be it the threat of fire or bloodshed

852
summer 2007
Journalof social history
announced
an
by
or
alarm
terror
the
aroused
the passing
by
bell
tolled
during
epidemics."27
I have
Likewise,
meaningful
the profoundly
ventional,
that
argued
distinctive
and
emotional
of Civil
aspect
visualist,
largely
the prevalence
antebellum
sectional
in
metaphors?based
soundscapes?helps
explain
causation
often missing
from con
was
at once
Sectional
identity
War
accounts.
political
of aural
rooted in the sounds of everyday life?the imagined pastoral quietude of the

slaveholders' South, the energetic throb of theNorth's hum of industry?and
also mediated through aural metaphors. Abolitionists decried the ominous si
lence
of the Slave
the enervating
Power,
silence
of southern
the cur
industry,
dling screams of thewhipped slave, and frettedabout what theWest, theAmer

ican future,would sound like. For their part, southern slaveholders blasted the
noise
of wage
the degenerative
labor,
of northern
cacophony
urban
life, and
the
worrying discord ofwhat theyheard as liberal gender relations. Sound as well as

sight had
real
force
and
sectional
soundscapes
sharpened
in emotionally
power
sounds,
silences,
fulways a sense of enduring, deep, and real difference between North and South
in the minds
of contemporaries.
towards
on
emphasis
because
precisely
metaphors
slipping
example,
physical
tinctive
and
potent
propel the nation
civil war.28
This
metaphor,
laden
Emotionally
real and imaginedmetaphorically?helped
and noises?both
avenue
of inquiry
also offers a promising
used and invented
sensory
contemporaries
senses. Through
the notion
of "proximate"
and sounds
broke
free of their physical
space,
sensory metaphor
how
understanding
complicates
thoroughly
smells,
into the
sensory
encounter.
tastes,
social
touches,
and
realm.
cultural
odor
century
no direct contact
ally
African
Americans
independent
of illustration:
the notion
the
in both
who
Americans.
with African
the construction
stereotype,
already
that black
people
and
the nineteenth-
believed
And
in place
the stereotype
when whites
did
and
of, for
interaction
of immediate
By way
national
currency
gained
even
though many
people
U.S.
In this way,
became
otherness
had
and
a dis
twentieth
had
virtu
encounter
of metaphoric
status,
predisposed them to believe that black people did, in fact, smell, even though,
no
obviously,
such
odor
racialized
exists.29
I also suspect that futurework will work detail multiple senses. Such scholar
ship will
not
necessarily
judge
the senses
or as
in tension
exclusive
mutually
and
will thus avoid smuggling Enlightenment assumptions concerning the superior

ity of the eye
and
senses
of the proximate
the premodernity
into
its analysis.30
And while it is likely that sensoryhistories will increasingly go beyond the an

alytical and geographic borders of the nation-state, I think it also likely that
historians will apply the senses in an effortto understand the process by which
nation-states
were
created.
That
is to say, sensory
history
will
profitably
examine
the ways inwhich the senses have helped in the creation of nationalism
for that matter,
particularism),
as some work
on
the American
Revolution,
(and,
the
coming of the U.S. Civil War, and the creation of German national identity
already suggests.This development will be of particular interests to historians of
senses frequently
not
non-visual
least because
memory
play very powerful
memories
and shaping
in not only stimulating
of the past but in activating
in the creation
I suspect
that a study of the role of smell, taste, and touch
example,
southern
nationalism
after
the Civil
War
is not
far off.31

roles
them.
of, for
853
But whatever the specific directions of sensoryhistory,practitioners would be

well advised to always historicize the senses and think carefully about themean
Should
forms of presentation.
ing of non-visual
they do
for sensory history might
prove
extremely
long-lived.
so, this "good
moment"
Department ofHistory
Columbia, SC 29208
ENDNOTES
of this essay were presented
to members
of the Department
Versions
Society,
Champaign,
at the Annual
of the St. George

Tucker
Meeting
at the University
of Illinois, Urbana
and as the Second Annual
of History,
James Baird Lecture, Department
I learned from the questions
of Southern Mississippi,
offered on
Hattiesburg.
University
each occasion.
I remain
on an early draft.
grateful
of History
toMike
Grossberg
and Peggy Hargis
for their comments
I take my cue from Eric Hobsbawm

social history vibrant,
who, in 1970, considered
new.
to be a so
"It is," he said, "a good moment
and
robust,
intellectually
excitingly
cial historian."
"From Social History
Sensory history has a similar feel. Eric Hobsbawm,
to the History of Society,"
in his On History
(New York, 1997), 93. See also my essay,
1.
165-86. On
"Making Sense of Social History," Journal of Social History 37 (Sept. 2003):
interest in sensory history, see Emily Eakin, "History You Can See,
recent, highly-profiled
and Taste," New York Times, Saturday, December
Hear, Smell, Touch,
20, 2003; Douglas
"Sound Awake," Australian
Review of Books (July 2000):
21-22. Note,
too, Mark
Kahn,
toAudible
Onward
Pasts," inHearing History: A Reader, Mark
ix-xxii and the recent and highly innovative
series
(Athens, Ga.,
2004),
of the senses on Chicago
Public Radio's
"Odyssey," hosted by Gretchen
and June in 2005. Recordings
for each session are on line
Helfrich, which aired inMay
at http://www.wbez.org/programs/odyssey/odyssey_senses.asp.
For a very helpful overview
M.
Smith,
"Introduction:
M.
Smith, ed.
on the history
of current
interest in the senses, measured

conferences
by the number of international
the topic in recent years and the proliferation
of scholarly work across disciplines,
see David Howes,
in Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture
"Forming Perceptions,"
ed. (New York, 2005), 399-402.
The
of book series
introduction
Reader, David Howes,
on the topic (most notably Berg's Sensory Formations and Sense and Sensibilities series) and
the establishment
of a new journal?The
Senses and Society?also
in
suggest burgeoning
on
terest in the topic. Quotation

to Our
from George H. Roeder,
Jr. in his essay, "Coming
at Canadian
1112. Scholars
Journal of American History 81 (December
Senses,"
1994):
institutions?most
and Joy Parr, and anthropolo
obviously historians
John E. Crowley
David Howes,
and Anthony
written thought
Classen,
gists Constance
Synnott?have
on aspects of the history of the senses.

the intellectual
and
fully and innovatively
Why
interest in the senses at Canadian
universities
is unclear but itmight have
programmatic
something to do with the early work on sound and the senses by, among others, R. Murray
Sch?fer, Barry Truax
(both of theWorld
Soundscape
Project at Simon Fraser University),
and Marshall
McLuhan.
influenced by Lucien Febrve, the Annales
historians,
European
and the important work of medical
historians
generally, Alain Corbin,
(particu
larly by the late Roy Porter), have been engaged with sensory history for a while. See
note 6 below.
school
2.
Few historians
ological
aspects
of the senses have
of the field. Notable
deliberated
exceptions
at length on the theoretical or method

include Alain
Corbin's
essay, "A His

summer 2007
854 journal of social history

tory and Anthropology
orig. 1991), 81-195;
ican Sounded
(Ithaca,
in Leigh
toriography
in his Time, Desire and Horror

1995;
(London,
in Richard Cullen
Rath's How Early Amer
of the Senses"
an
section
important
N.Y,
2003),
Eric Schmidt,
an astute
173-184;
Hearing
Things:
of aspects of the his

and theAmerican
discussion
Religion,
Illusion,
in her
1-37; Emily Thompson's
2000),
(Cambridge, Mass,
Enlightenment
helpful chapter
and theCulture of Listening inAmer
The Soundscape
ofModernity: Architectural Acoustics
is Sound
ica, 1900-1933
2002),
1-12; Bruce R. Smith, "How Sound
(Cambridge, Mass.,
inHearing History, 389-393;
and my own thoughts in Listening toNineteenth
History?"
in Hearing History,
2001),
261-269;
Back,"
Century America
"Listening
(Chapel Hill,
"Introduction:
398-401;
ingHistory
to Audible
Onward
Pasts,"
some theoretical considerations
Peter Bailey,
Jacques Attali,
Shafer,
Murray
Connor.
3.
reproduces
Paul Gilroy,
Against
Race:
Douglas
in ibid., ix-xxii. Part One

o? Hear
on sound and history offered by R.
Kahn,
Imagining Political Culture
Hillel
Schwartz,
Beyond
the Color
and Steven
Line
bridge,MA, 2001), 11, 13, 21-23, 35-37, 40, 44-46, 48, 155-164, 191.
4.
On
historians'
the thoughtful
cially
in Twentieth-Century
to privilege
tendency
remarks in Martin
the ocular much

Jay, Downcast
has
been written.
Eyes: The Denigration

45, 66-69; Constance
French Thought
1993),
(Berkeley,
the Senses inHistory and across Cultures
See
(Cam
espe
of Vision
Classen,
of Sense: Exploring
to Our Senses,"
"Coming
Worlds
398-401.
has been
5.
Note
(London,
1993); Roeder,
in Hearing History,
1114; Mark M. Smith,
"Listening Back,"
it
In this regard, we have been pursing a sensory history for a long time?but
a visual history, and a largely unwitting one at that.
Roeder,
"Coming
to our Senses,
1115,
1116.
the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England

Governing
similar lines, see Edward G. Gray, New World Babel: Languages
1998). Along
in Early America
Grasso, A Speaking
1999); Christopher
(Princeton, N.J.,
inEighteenth-Century Connecticut
Aristocracy: Transforming Public Discourse
(Chapel Hill,
in a variety of fields have broached
the senses. Lisa Gitelman,
N.C.,
1999). Scholars
6.
Jane Kamensky,
(New York,
and Nations
in theEdison Era (Stanford,

and WritingMachines:
Representing Technology
Scripts, Grooves,
Calif.,
1999), Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction
and Emily Thompson,
The Soundscape
(Durham, N.C,
2002),
of Modernity,
approach
studies and the history of technology.
the topic by way of communication
and media
on the senses. See most obviously
the essays in
Legal historians have written a fair bit
Lionel Bently and Leo Flynn, eds., Law and the Senses: Sensational Jurisprudence
(Lon
and the
don, 1996); Bernard Hibbitts,
Visuality, Aurality,
"Making Sense of Metaphors:
229
16 Cardozo
Law Review 229 (1994),
legal Discourse,"
Reconfiguration " of American
in Perfor
and Legal Expression
356; Hibbitts,
'Coming toOur Senses': Communication
mance Cultures,"
For work by geographers,
Emory Law Journal 41, no.4 (1992), 874-959.
see Paul Rodaway,
Sensuous Geographies:
1994); Douglas
Body, Sense and Place (London,
in Focus," Area
"The Senses
Pocock,
sensitive to questions
been especially
ample, Raymond
W.
Smilor
produced
historians have
25 (1993):
11-16. Environmental
of sensory experience. As early as the 1970s, for ex
at
important work on noise. See his "Cacophony
34th and 6th:The Noise Problem inAmerica, 1900-1936,"American Studies 18 (1977):

Problem
The Noise
the Industrial Environment:
"Confronting
Boundaries
"Personal
of Texas,
1978);
(Ph.D diss., University
on Noise,
Environmental
vironment:
The Legal Attack
1865-1930,"
has recently taken up where Smilor left off. See
24-36. Peter A. Coates
23-38;
1932"
Stillness
of the Past: Toward
mental History
10 (October
an Environmental
2005):
636-665.
Of
History
particular
of Sound
note
inAmerica,
1893
in the Urban
En
3 (1979):
his "The Strange
Environ
and Noise,"
iswork

Review
on
sound by the
855
art historian,
Kahn. See his Noise, Water, and Meat: A History of Sound in theArts
Douglas
there is little historical
1999). Although
(Cambridge,
scholarship on taste, this is chang
and "food" historians who, while
ing in part courtesy of "commodity"
they probably do
not consider
offer helpful details. See, most
themselves
sensory historians, nevertheless
Sidney W.
obviously,
(New York,
1987);
Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar inModern History

Mintz,
Bittersweet: The Story of Sugar (Crows Nest, NSW,
Peter Macinnis,
2002); Mark Kurlansky,Salt:A World History (New York, 2002); Andrew Dalby,Danger
ous Tastes:
The Story of Spices (Berkeley, Calif., 2000). See also Sidney W. Mintz, Tasting
into Eating, Culture, and thePast (Boston, Mass.,
Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions
1996).
see Denise Gigante,
Also
Taste: A Literary History
(New Haven,
Conn.,
2005). Histori
is relatively rare, virtually all of it in European
cal work on the haptic generally
history,
and a good deal of it indebted to literary scholars and historians of medicine.
See Sander
inMedicine
and the Five Senses, W. F. Bynum
Gilman,
"Touch,
sexuality, and disease,"
and Roy Porter, eds. (Cambridge,
Sander Gilman, Goethe's Touch:
Eng., 1993), 198-225.;
O'Rourke
Touching,
Seeing, and Sexuality (Tulane, La., 1988); Marjorie
Boyle, Senses of
toCalvin
Touch: Human Dignity and Deformity from Michelangelo
(Boston, Mass.,
1998);
Laura Gowing, Common Bodies: Women,
Touch, and Power in Seventeenth-Century
England
D. Harvey,
in Early
ed., Sensible Flesh: On Touch
Penn., 2003)
(see the essay by Scott Manning
Stevens,
on North America).
Medical
historians have, given the na
chapter 7, for some material
ture of their topic, been conspicuously
engaged with histories of the senses for some time.
Conn.,
(New Haven.
2003);
Modern Culture
(Philadelphia,
Elizabeth
to the 1993 edited collec

in their introduction
F. Bynum and Roy Porter noted
and the Five Senses: "As a practical
tion, Medicine
activity, medicine
requires its votaries
to rely on their senses to come to diagnostic
turn
in
which
dictate therapeutic
judgments
As W.
recommendations.
the relationship
use their senses
of a learned
As members
and
and, detective-like,
embraces
history of medicine
ample
inMedicine
and Porter, "Introduction,"
7.
On
sensory hierarchies
picions,
profession,
... As
reality.
and
doctors
students
the Fine Senses,
has been written,
1-2.
but see especially

S. Shields,
Howes,
"Forming
Sus
"Questions,
336. Connie
Y
Journal of the Early Republic 24 (Summer
2004):
Speculations,"
on the California
Odors
and Social Conflict
Coast
"Monterey-by-the-Smell:
Perceptions,"
Chang,
much
are forced
to ponder on
are
they
taught how to
to interpret the clues they have picked up. . . .The
portions of both sense and sensibility." See Bynum
sensation
between
9-11;
Classen,
Worlds
of Sense,
2-7;
David
line,"PacificHistoricalReview 73 (May 2004): 183-214. A good deal ofwork on aurality
continues
to privilege
both the audible

(not silence) and music
(rather than paralinguis
for example,
Shane White
and Graham White's,
The Sounds of Slav
ery: Discovering African American History
through Songs, Sermons, and Speech (New York,
to the Progressives,"
in
Reviews
2005). On music and sound, see Scott Gac,
"Listening
tic sounds).
American
See,
History
32
(September
2004):
411-412.
Gac's
essay
reviews Derek
Vaillant,
Sounds ofReform:Progressivism
& Music inChicago, ?873-1935 (Chapel Hill, 2003).
But note Douglas

Kahn's
sound inmodern Western
inWireless
Whitehead,
Imagination:
eds.,
"the privileging of music as the art of

warning not to continue
culture." Kahn,
Introduction: Histories of Sound Once Removed,"
Kahn
and Gregory
Sound, Radio, and theAvant-Garde,
Douglas
(Cambridge,
Mass.,
1992),
2.
two works I deal

400. I have no grudge here. The
Howes,
"Forming Perceptions,"
in this essay?Rath's
in some detail
as
and Hoffer's?I
have endorsed deliberately,
to serve as an endorsement.
with Rath's, or, as with Hoffer's, my review has been excerpted
Hoffer has also complimented
4.
my own work. Hoffer, Sensory Worlds,
8.
with


9.
reviews
Two
that make
this point
are Richard
summer 2007
in theWilliam
Rath's
and Mary
Quar
61 (April 2004): 381-382 andmine in theAmericanHistoricalReview 109 (October

terly
2004): 1223.
10.
Hoffer,
Sensory Worlds,
11.
Hoffer,
Sensory Worlds,2,6.
12.
Hoffer,
Sensory Worlds,
viii, 2-3
2, 8, 9, 10.
13. Hoffer, Sensory Worlds,

12-13. Other historians
in their
also reference the personal
narratives
and research strategies. For research on his much
anticipated
forthcoming
book on the history of noise, Hillel Schwartz visits, among other things, libraries (both to
read in and listen to), foundries, nightclubs
(what a job!), airports, and, like Hoffer, "liv
to study the decibel
levels of blacksmithing
and of eating off pewter plates."
ingmuseums,
In the absence of Schwartz's
of these
book, we cannot know for sure how his experience
his findings but I confess that I am hard pressed to

adds to an historical
of how
materially
investigation
in the past experienced
and understood
Richard
Rath
also uses
people
blacksmithing.
a musician,
a band member,
his personal
with sound?as
and a listener in a
experiences
church?but
less to shape his research, rather as a way to present it.Rath begins
Quaker
sounds?or
noises?has
influenced
understand
how
a museum
visiting
sketches of his listening. But

Sounded with personal
chapter of How Early America
is always quick to historicize. Hillel
The His
Schwartz,
"Beyond Tone and Decibel:
reenactors
Chronicle
tory of Noise,"
Jan. 9, 1999, B8. On Civil War
of Higher Education,
and clothes, see "How to Dress forWar," National Geographic
(April 2005).
each
he
14. On
see Charles
D. Ross, Civil War Acoustic
Shadows
shadows,
(Shippens
On Civil War
sounds, see Mark M. Smith, "Of Bells, Booms, Sounds,
to the Civil War
in The War Was You and Me: Civilians
South,"
Listening
acoustic
burg, Penn.,
and Silences:
2001).
and theAmerican
notions
15.
of pain,
Hoffer's
Civil War, Joan Cashin,

ed. (Princeton, N.J., 2002), 9-34. On changing
see David
B. Morris, The Culture of Pain (Berkeley, Calif.,
1993).
book
tries "to include
store to American
the powerless,
history its diversity." Hoffer,

earlier work would have avoided
these problems.
Our Senses,"
1115-1116.
to "re
the put-upon,
the oppressed,"
vii. A close reading of
Sensory Worlds,
to
See, for example, Roeder,
"Coming
16.
Hoffer,
17.
Howes,
18.
on the centrality of the

is also quoted
14- Hoffer
Hoffer, Sensory Worlds,
in Emily Eakins' New York Times piece on the history of the senses.
Sensory Worlds,
"Forming
253.
Perceptions,"
400.
lemon
problem
19.
The
same held
tasty soft drink?root

Affective Cognition,"
true, apparently, for sarsaparilla?a

S. Herz,
beer?in
the U.S. Rachel
inOlfaction, Taste, andCognition,
medicinal
odor
"Influence
ofOdors
in Britain
on Mood
but a
and
et al ed. (Cam
see Classen,
162 esp. On
the gas liquid chromatographer,
bridge, Eng., 2002), 160-177,
see
198-200.
On
and
Sweetness
and Power.
taste,
Howes,
Aroma,
Mintz,
sugar
Synnott,
Catherine
Rouby
see Eliz
the historically
situated meaning
of visual evidence
and abolitionism,
"
B. Clark,
'The Sacred Rights of the Weak':
and the Culture
Pain, Sympathy,
in Antebellum
of Individual Rights
Journal ofAmerican History 82 (Septem
America,"
20.
On
abeth
berl995):
463-493.
For thoughtful
remarks on
the nature
of visual
evidence,

see Joshua
857
on Making
a Social History Docu
the Nineteenth
Brown, "Visualizing
Century: Notes
commen
and the penetrating
114-125,
mentary Film," Radical History Review 38 (1987):
"
a Necessity':
'Pictures Have Now Become
The Use of Images in
tary of Louis P. Masur,
American
21.
R.
Bruce
Factor
Mark M.
Back,"
22.
Textbooks,"
History
Smith,
The Acoustic
Smith, Hearing
esp. 394-395.
Classen,
Smith's
1999);
(Chicago,
Howes,
Journal ofAmerican
389-393,
History,
Synnott,
World
comment
Aroma,
History
84 (March
1998):
to theO
of Early Modern
England: Attending
in his "How Sound
is Sound History?"
in
on 389-390.
See also my "Listening
quotation
204.
inWalter
Ong's work ismost readily summarized and accessible
in The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook
ing Sensorium,"
on 29-30.
ed. (Toronto,
1991), quotation
of the Senses, David Howes,
and
the
Word
The
(New
York,
1988)
Literacy:
Orality
TechnologLzing of
23.
the
Word:
McLuhan,
Howes,
1409-1424.
"The Shift
J.Ong,
in theAnthropology
But see, too, Ong's
and The Presence of
Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (New York, 1967); Marshall
The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making
(Toronto,
1962); David
of Typographic Man
inHowes,
"Sensorial Anthropology,"
170-173
ed., Varieties of Sensory Experience,
and
esp.; Jack Goody
Ian Watt,
"The Consequences
of Literacy,"
Comparative
Studies
in
SocietyandHistory5 (1963): 304-45. Febvre'sdiscussion is inhis The ProblemofUnbelief
trans. (Cambridge,
in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais, Beatrice Gottlieb,
with the McLuhan/Ong
the
436-7. The most robust engagement
Mass.,
1982), 428-32,
sis is Elizabeth
The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications
and
Eisenstein,
inEarly Modern Europe, 2 vols. (Cambridge,
Cultural Transformations
Eng., 1979). See as
well D. R. Woolf,
Past in Renaissance
"Speech,
Text,
and Time:
Sense
The
18 (1986):
England," Albion
is also influenced by the McLuhan/Ong
Things)
case against the visual-as-modern
claim.
Rath, How
24.
McLuhan/Ong
Early America
debate. Hoffer,
Sounded,
debate
174. Hoffer
Sensory Worlds,
of Hearing
159-93.
and
the Sense
of the
Leigh Eric Schmidt

(Hearing
a powerful
but ends of making
is only marginally
interested
in the
3, 4-5.
173. Neither Rath nor Hoffer raised methodolog

Rath, How Early America Sounded,
in their reviews about the other's work. See Peter Charles Hoffer, "When
ical questions
inAmerican History 32 (June 2004):
Sound Mattered,"
Reviews
review
Rath's
144-150;
25.
inWilliam andMary Quarterly61 (April 2004).
as modern,
see Classen,
26. On smell as premodern
and vision and odorlessness
Howes,
on the destabilizing
of vision at century's end, see Kate Flint, The Vic
Synnott, Aroma;
torians and theVisual
Imagination
Eng., 2000). See also Jay,Downcast
(Cambridge,
Eyes;
in theNineteenth Cen
Jonathan Crary, Techniques
of theObserver: On Vision and Modernity
tury (Cambridge.
Mass.,
Vision
and the Invisible
torical and Contemporary
1996), 83-98. On
York,
O'Malley,
America,"
inmy How
my
of Invisible Things':
Beer, "Authentic
1990); Gillian
Tidings
in the Later Nineteenth
in Vision
in Context: His
Century,"
and Martin
Perspectives on Sight, Teresa Brennan
Jay, eds. (New
efforts to shore up racial categories around this time, see Michael

and the Money
in Nineteenth-Century
Question
99 (April 1994): 369, 375. The
larger argument
and Species: Race

"Specie
American Historical Review
"Finding
Race
IsMade:
Deficiency:
Slavery, Segregation, and the Senses (Chapel

On Eugenics,
and Certainty,"
Economics,
Economicsand Sociology64 (July,2005): 887-900.
is
see also
Hill, 2006);
American
Journal of

summer 2007

27.
Alain
Foul and theFragrant: Odor and theFrench Social Imagination

in the \9th-Century
Sound and Meaning
143; Alain Corbin,
1986),
trans. (New York, 1998), 288. See also Sima Godfrey,
Martin Thorn,
Corbin,Trte
bridge, Mass.,
Countryside,
(Cam
French
"Alain
Corbin: Making Sense ofFrenchhistory,"FrenchHistoricalStudies25 (spring2002): 382

398.
28.
See my Listening toNineteenth-Century

to the Heard Worlds
of Antebellum
tening
America;
America,"
29. On metaphor
and the senses, see Mark
America,
261-269;
Hibbitts,
"Making Sense
How Race
Is Made;
and my essay, "Making
in Peter Steams,
Smells, and Desegregation,"
"Lis
399-401;
Back,"
inHearing History.
"Listening
379, both
Smith, Listening toNineteenth-Century

race and smell, see my
of Metaphors."
On
M.
Scents
Sense:
Make
ed., American
White
Behavioral
Noses,
History
Black
(New York,
2005),pP.179-198.
30.
its topic through touch, smell, and sight is

good example of work that understands
on the haptic that isnecessarily
The Book of Skin, a powerful meditation
Connor's,
informed by deep understanding
of the olfactory and visual. Steven Connor,
The Book of
Skin (Ithaca, N.Y,
too, the sensible call (and offering) by Robert
2004). Note,
J?tte, A
Steven
History
of the Senses:
From Antiquity
toCyberspace
(Cambridge,
2005),
12-13
especially.
see Hoffer, Sensory Worlds,

on competing
versions of
189-251;
see my Listening
identity, north and south, and the coming of the Civil War,
on German
toNineteenth-Century
and music, see the astute remarks
nationalism
America;
inNora M. Alter
"Introduction:
Sound Matters,"
by Nora M. Alter and Lutz Koepnick,
31.
On
the Revolution,
aural national
and Lutz Koepnick,
eds., Sound Matters:
(New York, 2004), 1-29.
Essays
on theAcoustics
ofModern

German
Culture

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Producing Sense, Consuming Sense, Making Sense: Perils and Prospects for Sensory History

Author(s): Mark M. Smith

This content downloaded from 193.92.136.160 on Mon, 10 Feb 2014 09:44:00 AM

Can You Hear,

See, Smell, Taste, Touch Me, Now?

tastes, alluring nibbles, and sights just glimmers in what

In that delightful anticipation, though, problems loom, especially concern

theorized field of inquiry,more empirically fleshed out than intellectually con

and interpretive problems facing historians of the senses,

a usable but ahistorical sensory past. I argue that if sensoryhistory is to realize

experienced it. Failure to distinguish between sensory production (something

sumption (something that ishostage to the context inwhich itwas produced)

This content downloaded from 193.92.136.160 on Mon, 10 Feb 2014 09:44:00 AM

journal of social history

this essay is framed in termsof "U.S" history, I do not mean to claim

it clear that nationally

of what Paul Gilroy has termed "race thinking" make

understandable and, for the purposes of this

of itself.Histories of hearing, forexample, tend to examine how the intellectual

sense but its social

to both visual and non-visual senses something thatmakes

little or less sense

ingpeoples' experience of the past, shows how theyunderstood theirworlds and

used to investigate and understand rather than a carefully delimited field of in

all be written and re

service of literaryflourishes and, as such, conceptually flaccid. Playful reference

This content downloaded from 193.92.136.160 on Mon, 10 Feb 2014 09:44:00 AM

PRODUCING SENSE,COMSUMING SENSE,MAKING SENSE

(just as a study of antebellum

slaverywhich casually referstoAbraham Lincoln

ishardly political biog

filth and smell are intolerable"?leave

set by the reformer's

been enriched considerably by, for example, JaneKamensky's 1998 study,Gov

on orality/aurality,not taste, hence the book's subtitle,The Politics of Speech in

bitiously, Peter Charles Hoffer investigates all five senses in SensoryWorlds of

The InventionofComfort (2001), necessarily engages the senses, especially how

fort,Listening toNineteenth-CenturyAmerica (2001), examines the evolution of

nineteenth-nineteenth noise has been studied by Raymond Smilor, while Lisa

and Emily Thompson

This content downloaded from 193.92.136.160 on Mon, 10 Feb 2014 09:44:00 AM

journal of social history

in the 1880s and 1930s isan exception and a notable effortseeking

saryduplication and remains deaf as well as blind to important interpretive in

Charles Hoffer's pioneering, award-winning book, SensoryWorlds ofEarlyAmer

more muted form, in several other works. First, though,Hoffer's SensoryWorlds

starts off on firm

was of immense importance to the people who lived in earlyAmerica. It should

idea of the senses

This content downloaded from 193.92.136.160 on Mon, 10 Feb 2014 09:44:00 AM

PRODUCING SENSE,COMSUMING SENSE,MAKING SENSE

the feel of the past,"

Hoffer elaborates his case thoughtfullyand carefully in a section entitled "Go

as they did, we are

sory past." No,

highly distorted, he firmlybelieves that "living museums" and "commercial re

or any of the other

recapturing the sensoryGettysburg of 1863 in 1998?They dressed in replica uni

This content downloaded from 193.92.136.160 on Mon, 10 Feb 2014 09:44:00 AM

journal of social history

filed, the re-recreations

the dung, or experienced