Contribution short abstract:

Based on fieldwork in Turkey, this paper examines the role of docu-poetry in translating the olfactory affect. Focusing on aesthetic debates around rose fragrances, it tackles the challenges of representing non-verbal, embodied experiences and explores how docu-poetry can overcome these obstacles.

Contribution long abstract:

Poetry, though articulated mostly through words, is fragmented, opening up an intersubjective field that transcends the limits of the discursive. Creating a shared sensory experience, a new one each time, in a Rancièrian sense, it intervenes in the distribution of the sensible as well as what is given as equality and politics. Docu-poetry, as a hybrid genre, incorporates poetic elements like imagery, rhythm, and metaphor with historical and personal accounts.

In this paper, drawing on my fieldwork in Turkey, I aim to weave together the possibilities of sensory ethnography and docu-poetry, hoping to uncover novel ways of articulating and representing the depth of our embodied encounters. In Turkey, ‘rosely’ scents —rose, rose oil, and rose water— evoke passionate sensual-aesthetic debates between opposing socio-political actors with their multilayered and conflicting connotations, bringing forth powerful memories, affects, and emotions. Symbolizing the Prophet Muhammad and Heaven, rose fragrances are frequently used to perfume public spaces by the Justice and Development Party, which has governed Turkey in an increasingly authoritarian manner since 2002. My anthropological endeavor seeks to comprehend and articulate the affective arrangements that these fragrances generate.

However, olfactory affect, as being pre-personal, non-verbal, yet cultural, poses methodological challenges concerning articulation and representation. In this talk, first, I intend to get beyond these obstacles with my docu-poems, which use collage and montage techniques to translate verbal and non-verbal accounts of my interlocutors. Then, I will discuss the political and artistic contributions of docu-poetry in subverting hegemonic and linear modes of knowing and representing.