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

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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

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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

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smell?the
because

it

844

summer 2007

journal of social history

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

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PRODUCING SENSE,COMSUMING SENSE,MAKING SENSE

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,"

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846

summer 2007

journal of social history

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

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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

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848

summer 2007

journal of social history

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

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PRODUCING SENSE,COMSUMING SENSE,MAKING SENSE

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

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historiography

is

850

summer 2007

journal of social history

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,

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PRODUCING SENSE,COMSUMING SENSE,MAKING SENSE

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

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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

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roles
them.
of, for

PRODUCING SENSE,COMSUMING SENSE,MAKING SENSE

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

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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

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Review

on

sound by the

PRODUCING SENSE, COMSUMING SENSE,MAKING SENSE

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

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856 journal of social history

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,

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see Joshua

PRODUCING SENSE, COMSUMING SENSE,MAKING SENSE

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

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

summer 2007

858 journal of social history

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

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German

Culture