In his Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan refers to an interesting experiment which seems to provide a physiological basis, so to speak, for Proust’s experience of the madeleine. The stimulation of brain tissue during surgery revives many memories, and these are saturated with special scents and smells which structure them into units and thus form a scaffold for early experiences. Scent is steeped in history, so to speak. It is filled with stories, with narrative images. The sense of smell, as McLuhan remarks, is ‘iconic’. We might also say that it is the epic–narrative sense, connecting, interweaving, compressing temporal events into an image, a narrative form. Scents, which are steeped in images and history, are able to stabilize a self that is threatened with dissociation by providing it with a framing identity, an image of self. A stretch of time allows the self to come back to itself. This return-to-self is blissful. Where there are scents, there is self-gathering. —Byung-Chul Han
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In his Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan refers to an interesting experiment which seems to provide a physiological basis, so to speak, for Proust’s experience of the madeleine. The stimulation of brain tissue during surgery revives many memories, and these are saturated with special scents and smells which structure them into units and thus form a scaffold for early experiences. Scent is steeped in history, so to speak. It is filled with stories, with narrative images. The sense of smell, as McLuhan remarks, is ‘iconic’. We might also say that it is the epic–narrative sense, connecting, interweaving, compressing temporal events into an image, a narrative form. Scents, which are steeped in images and history, are able to stabilize a self that is threatened with dissociation by providing it with a framing identity, an image of self. A stretch of time allows the self to come back to itself. This return-to-self is blissful. Where there are scents, there is self-gathering.
—Byung-Chul Han
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