'You can change your noses, but you can’t change your Moses' : olfactory aesthetics and the Jewish 'Race'.

Abstract

This article shifts the analysis of the ‘Jewish’ nose away from its visual significance to its olfactory capacity. It develops the notion of an olfactory aesthetics as a way of becoming attuned to the role smell plays in the interpretation of racial differences. Through analyzing a corpus of images by Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp that represent both the ‘Jewish’ nose and processes of olfaction, the article explores how smell heightens the racialized perception of visual symbols like the nose. Ultimately, however, it argues that an interpretative process attuned to smell may help disrupt the predetermined signs that mark racialized subjects as different.