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Lecture

Kolonya Renaissance: Hygiene, Healing and the Configuration of Eau de Cologne during the early COVID-19 crisis in Turkey and beyond

Lecture by Claudia Liebelt (Freie Universität Berlin)

In taking the uses of eau de cologne in Turkey and its diaspora in the early COVID-19 pandemic as a starting point, this talk investigates the role of fragrant matter for cultural notions of hygiene and healing. Eau de Cologne, which emerged in Western Europe during the second plague pandemic, was localized as kolonya in Turkey during the nineteenth century. In the early COVID-19 crisis in Turkey, it regained its early association with hygiene and healing despite its high concentration of alcohol, which is a problematic substance in Islam. Moreover, it assumed a special role in Turkey’s dealing with the crisis, revitalizing and transforming long-standing kolonya cultures. Drawing on ethnographic material and archival research, the talk outlines the uses and affective configuration of kolonya as an “intra-active” substance. It illustrates the entanglement of fragrants, bodily hygiene and (micro-)biopolitics in present-day Turkey. Finally, it engages with neo-material perspectives to argue for greater attention to be given to the olfactorial aspects of ethical formation in Islam.

Claudia Liebelt is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the FU Berlin. Her research foci are in the Anthropology of the Body and the Senses, Gender and Sexualities, Political Anthropology and Religion in the Middle East and Turkey. She has authored Istanbul Appearances: Beauty and the Making of Middle-Class Femininities in Urban Turkey (Syracuse UP, forthcoming) and Caring for the 'Holy Land': Filipina domestic workers in Israel (Berghahn, 2011) and has edited a volume on Beauty and the norm: debating standardization in bodily appearance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

The event will be held in a hybrid format. Please register here for online participation: https://tinyurl.com/ymd6uftx. If you would like to attend the event in person, please send an email to registration@zmo.de.

This event is part of the lecture series:
Summer Semester 2022
ZMO-Colloquium

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