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Smell and memory as Jewish archives: the case of Russian Jewish writers
Author(s): Mondry, Henrietta
Date: 2014
Topics: Jewish Identity, Age and Generational Issues, Artefacts and Material Culture, Memory, Main Topic: Other, Attitudes to Jews, Stereotypes, Libraries and Archives, Literature
Abstract: The paper analyses the complex dynamics of the rejection of ‘Jewish smells’ as markers of Jewish corporeality in the context of stereotypes constructed by Russian culture. It addresses the conflicting desire to cherish and yet reject the smells of childhood as an important repository of memory in autobiographical prose by Russian Jewish writers. It theorizes the notion of smell as a Jewish archive in the context of inter-generational knowledge, displacement, space and time. How can the most ethereal of all sensations serve as an archive? How do we pass on this type of knowledge-inducing mechanism to future generations? And how do writers negotiate their national/ethnic identities on the basis of this form of remembering?