Leonora Zoninsein

My dissertation, How a Whale Becomes a Molecule: A Geography of Smell advances a material approach to the senses. I trace the translation of ambergris, a sperm whale gallstone used in perfumery, into its synthetic counterpart, ambroxan, to query the articulation of a global, modern sense of smell through its emergence in specific places and moments. Through my formation as a perfumer, I understand the production of industrial material equivalence as a spatialized, craft-based, embodied practice. My contemplations on the genesis of a contemporary chemical ontology destabilize enlightenment (visual and philogenic) taxonomic principles; I draw attention instead to the co-incidental power of an alternate, under-determined, mobile, affective sensorial logic. My methods draw equally from the arts as from critiques of labor and nature.