SMELL
About this ebook
The law aims at presenting itself as rational and objective. Smell, on the other hand, is one of the least integrated senses in the legal edifice, in comparison to, say, seeing and hearing. This can be attributed mainly to the fact that sense-making of smell and law are different, even antithetical. Smell operates undercurrent, tickling the olfactory antennas of individual and collective bodies while habitually hiding behind other sensory volumes. Law, on the other hand, has an interest in appearing present, universal, constant. Olfactory sense-making relies on its elusiveness; legal sense-making invests in its obviousness. Yet, the two can interact in most unexpected ways, as this volume amply shows. If anything, smell airs the way in which law conceptualises and contextualises its own actuality. Smell brings law forth by allowing it to show its underbelly, its elusive sense-making that is invariably sacrificed in preference to the necessity of legal impressions of constancy. However, smell’s fragmentary, discontinuous and unstable nature, despite all the ordering that goes to it, poses a peculiar challenge to the law. This volume sets out to investigate this juncture.
About the author
Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos is an academic/artist/fiction author. He is Professor of Law & Theory at the University of Westminster, UK, Director of The Westminster Law & Theory Lab, and co-editor of the University of Westminster Press journal Anthropocenes: Human, Inhuman, Posthuman.
Danilo Mandic is Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Westminster. His work is situated within the intersections of law and humanities, with a particular interest in the processes of knowledge formation. Danilo’s research interests include intellectual property law, art law, law and sound, law and technology, aesthetics of law, sound studies, and popular culture.
Caterina Nirta is a lecturer at Royal Holloway University of London, UK, and her research interests revolve around the body, space and time. She is the author of Marginal Bodies, Trans Utopias (2018).
Andrea Pavoni is Assistant Research Professor at DINAMIA’CET – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal. His research explores the relation between materiality, normativity and aesthetics in the urban. He is Associate Editor of the journal Lo Squaderno, Explorations in Space and Society, and the author of Controlling Urban Events: Law, Ethics and the Material (2018).
