The Affective Afterlife of the “Smelly Immigrant” Trope: Contested Scents, “Race,” and Olfactory Contact Zones in Berlin

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes the notion of “olfactory contact zones” to investigate the role of odors and scents and the affects they give rise to in Berlin's urban publics. Drawing on the notion of the “afterlife” of racialised violence, it shows how tropes of the “smelly immigrant,” anchored in European antisemitism and colonial history, live on despite being considered a thing of the past in an ostensibly “post‐racial” Germany. By analyzing olfactory affect, sensory encounters and scentscapes in Berlin's multicultural Neukölln district, the paper contributes to an emerging debate on urban sensoria and the relations between the senses, “race” and affects in European postcolonial publics.