The general topic - how someone smells and how that relates to class, etc is interesting. The direction of her thesis isnβt interesting to me, but how strange that so many people are so offended that they take the time to write the diatribes they write. As inβ¦donβt they have something better to do with their time and emotional capacity?
Couldnβt disagree more. This is at the bottom of a fraction of a percent of interesting levels. I have almost the exact opposite intuition and find it obvious, and Iβm surprised you disagree.
Of all problems regarding racism, it probably ranks in the bottom of everything, and the way that some pieces of literature have used stereotypes about smell (that I was mostly only vaguely aware of in the first place) is almost irrelevant to modern problems. If police shootings of unarmed black people arenβt a statistical problem and Implicit Association Tests arenβt valid, why should we expect smell to matter or even be worth studying? Let alone what some past smell stereotypes have to do with today. Maybe in some other countries it could matter or something, but this isnβt just about those specific cases.
Itβs a waste of money and time to study such subjects. I think philosophers spend too much time on history of philosophy, but thatβs far more valuable than this!
Intersectionality is also silly nonsense that justifies other silliness like standpoint epistemology, but this comment is already long enough.
Seems to me most history of Phil is probably less valuable than this β contemporary literature is evidence for contemporary cultural tropes, and facts about contemporary culture more generally. (I firmly believe that there are people who can get a better read on where a culture is at from its literature than from social science β thatβs one reason I wish I read fiction more.) I havenβt read it, but Louksβs project might tell us things about contemptible culture. History of Phil mostly teaches us false thoughts people had in the past, where those people are often so free-thinking that their thoughts donβt give us a representative idea of what the average person in their time thought about things. (Huge generalisation, counterexamples, etc.)
I donβt think this is a matter of merely βdifferent strokes for different folks.β Thousands of tax dollars go to these graduate programs to pay students to do this stuff. It should be spent on something worth the time. This isnβt just someone spending their free time reading about the history of knitting, this is someone taking years and thousands of dollars to study something that likely creates overall negative utility and is likely poor quality in the first place (based on the standards of these fields). The history of knitting is probably more accurate and important to today.
History of philosophy is far more valuable because these thinkers have often had a massive impact on western civilization and therefore today. If we discover that a certain thinker has been misinterpreted (say something was published posthumously and they couldnβt correct misinterpretations), perhaps we could ponder what civilization would be like if we interpreted it correctly. Thereβs some positive value to that even if the return on investment isnβt worth it.
Concepts like intersectionality are inherently normative, frequently inaccurate, divisive, and contribute to the societal distrust wokism creates. This isnβt merely a descriptive term - its typical narrative is that people that belong to certain categories experience more oppression when they belong to more than one allegedly βoppressedβ group and implies that society puts down all of these people. It adds fuel to the extremely absurd βstandpoint epistemologyβ fire that frequently tells white men they canβt diagnose societal problems because of their race. Such concepts are useless and epistemically harmful because they are inaccurate and create overall negative utility. Then, they further divide society and turn it against institutions like wokeness does in general.
Also, smell is one area where literary analysis is probably optimal method since it is virtually the only medium where olfactory perception is articulated and recorded (not painting, not photography, not film, not music, not history, etc.).
There are certain visible representations of odour. This can include images of people responding to smell such as holding their noses. A cloud, usually of a certain kind of foggy green often indicates smell. A few wave lines may also be used often in combination with heat as well. I recommend checking out the Johnny Fartpants strip from the Viz.
βIntersectionalityβ is a self-evidently useful concept; it helps us describe certain social phenomena that would be harder to describe without it.
Are all useful concepts self-evident? I doubt it - and what's striking about 'intersectionality' is just how culturally embedded it has become over time, even in academic adjacent spaces. It seems that's the thrust of its self-evidence: what it became. In any case, I think it's awesome how a concept from an obscure paper in 1991 can flower so widely like that.
As for this paper in question, it seems kind of intriguing to be honest. But even if it weren't you have to wonder why an audience orders of magnitude wider than would likely read even "legitimate" academic theses would behave this way towards her + this post. (Actually, no - you don't have to wonder at all, actually.) But it's got to be some sort of spiritual low-point for a person to take the time to say something mean to an budding academic about a thesis she wrote and is proud of. This isn't a high bar. Like, all one would have to do is just not do that and instead go to the grocery store or read the news or sweep off the patio or something.
I don't think that all useful concepts are self-evidently useful - but it seems to me that with intersectionality, we have instances of, say, sexism that are racialised, and the concept of intersectionality picks out those cases. It's not self-evident that intersectionality picks out a real social phenomenon in a Cartesian sense, but, I don't know, it seems pretty clear that there's this thing -e.g., racialized sexism - and then this concept - intersectionality - that picks it out. Am I missing something do you think?
Only in the sense that it might be over-engineering what could be done with good old fashioned discrete identity categories, combined. I think the insight with intersectionality is that the combination itself creates residual internal tensions, which reenforces the intersection as greater than the sum of its parts, so to speak.
Only vaguely related, but something I've been really concerned of late (basically since the emergence of social media) is dissolution of "internal conversations" to help manage things that are almost impossible to social-engineer around - say, for example, "machismo culture" is being criticized along feminist lines. I can see where "what Latino women say amongst themselves" might be different than around white-girl feminists, insofar as they have more complex relationships and proximities with the complexities of it. This isn't about right or wrong, but about navigating perspectival tensions, and the flattening of social space really strained this. Obviously intersectionality relates to this, and I think etiquette is going to also play a major role. The other day I read an article about the Dark Forest Internet, and about how there is a sort of re-emergence of personal silos (as opposed to toxic ideological silos in the open system) and it's kind of intriguing to me. I realize this is somewhat off topic, but it's been on my mind and what the hell.
The UN is a flawed organisation but it sometimes gets something right here or there. Of relevance are the UNESCO statements on race. These are sometimes counter productive denying science and differences rather than accepting the truth and accepting the differences between people. It is however not all nonsense. It was originally drafted as an anti-Nazi declaration following the second world war.
> Such differences can in no case serve as a pretext for any rank-ordered classification of nations or peoples.
Intersectional Feminism does just this with its racial classism which ranks peoples of the various races according to their perceived victimhood or oppression for example. It is inappropriately groupwise rather than examining matters on an individual basis. Intersecting is also subdividing. This is where it is stupid. It's not all that progressive as if it went all the way you end up with the individual which is by definition the point at which you can no longer divide. Indivisible. This excerpt from the UNESCO statement is one of the criteria albeit a little briefly stated for identifying Nazi ideology. The term Femnazi becomes formal in this context. I hate to follow Godwin's law but it's inevitable when talking about actual real life every day neo-Nazis.
Intersectional Feminism is more than just the simply boring concept of intersectionality. It is a kind of merger of rankings for protected characteristics. It combined female supremacy, black supremacy and homosexual supremacy, specifically lesbians. Few people are told this. You might miss it because it's really too boring to read for most who go along with it. I sadly have read a fair amount of it. I've also read the Koran. The pain and suffering I went through to accomplish that. The worst thing about it is that it's just so trite, you have to force yourself to read it. It's not like reading something interesting such as a Terry Pratchett novel.
Some of it derives from what were legitimate concepts but that have been spun to support this kind of bigotry. In some places it's a mess with conflicts of interests merging in common cause.
Part of it derives from various legal disputes and legal theory with nonsense having been allowed to leak in. A factory is racist and sexist. It doesn't hire females or people of a sub-Saharan African heritage. Those who would have got the job but were not hired all sue and get equal compensation. A black woman complains that she should have gotten double that of the white woman because she was discriminated against twice over. The counter argument to this is that it made no material difference. One is enough and the damages are the same. When testing this logically as a part of a legal test which is rare you would say that it is false because it would assert that she was not hired twice at the same time but it could have only have happen once at the same time. The counter argument to that is that logic is racist.
It's a useful concept indeed and you might therefore want to ask what exactly it is that it is being used for.
βSome of it derives from what were legitimate concepts but that have been spun to support this kind of bigotry. In some places it's a mess with conflicts of interests merging in common cause.β
You seem to be a little hasty here. Youβre taking an admittedly βlegitimateβ concept, and throwing it into a soup of misapplication, which is hard to argue with, both technically and in spirit (it can be very harmful, yes).
A concept and its development are different things. Free speech is an admittedly βlegitimateβ concept, but yelling βfireβ isnβt. What about hate speech rallies? In German theyβre illegal (theyβve got some awkward historical stuff to sort out); in the US theyβre generally not. Pardon the crass comparison, but do you have any idea how many eccentric, harmful and downright ridiculous variants on Judeo-Christianity have been over the millennia? We donβt hold Jesus accountable for some cult in Ohio that makes people save their toe-nail clippings and marry their daughters off at age 14. But somehow Kimberlee Crenshaw is responsible for the shit-fit middle America is having over a gender-transitioned kid wanting to play field hockey, and its residual blowback. (I know this wasnβt your exact point; Iβm just sayinβ - the disproportionality of ire has been just off the charts this decade.)
Iβm actually sympathetic to some of your criticism here, but more insofar as how susceptible it is to manipulation rather than the conceptual heavy lifting it can do. Honestly, I think intersectionality is all the more useful now in how fractured political coalitions are in the world.
At its core, for what itβs worth, I take intersectionality to be little more than a critical awareness of the multiple vectors of identity in any given circumstance, and how they impact power in systems etc when it comes to justice, harms, etc. As you say, I donβt find this especially controversial. In fact, itβs rather obvious at this point, but I think thatβs in part because its become so much a part of the background assumptions in culture, which to my main point is the best someone engineering a new concept could hope for.
In any case, I take the point Amos was making as upstream of all of this. Just because something is useful doesnβt mean itβs good.
I think that application is more applicable than development. Implementation and theory versus practice. There is a little more to it that that. There are a lot of things that originally were relevant even if flawed in their context. Many people who were not the originators then misunderstand it. That's not to say that originators are always right but even where they are there are concepts that end up in one way or another corrupted, deteriorated and perverted.
The concept of intersection on many levels is a really basic generic concept that's broad and abstract. It's not some kind of remarkable idea to apply it to many things. It's just a fairly generic broad concept. I have worked with it extensively as a systems engineer, database everything (programmer, designer, administrator, etc) among other things. In relation to anthropological considerations of various types of categories of people weighed against various hardships in history the attention given to it is oddly specific.
It often appears self condescending like when someone quite simply is amazed by the Venn Diagram as though something holy when it's really basic even without any kind of background in things such as set theory. This is because it's not really about an intellectual pursuit. It's the manifestation of social conflict and wrestling various resources including monetary, emotional, social and cognitive toward certain people or groups. There is almost always an ulterior motive involved. I think that we are quibbling over intersectionality and Intersectionality.
I'm not entirely sure to what point you are making a joke versus raising a point versus a little confused. The author is incorrect in using the lower case version in her abstract. I strongly suspect if I were to peer review her paper there would be many corrections required. I am very almost certain of it. Even outside of Feminist Theory the larger ideological scope of the term in this context would be something like the intersection of oppression based on protected characteristics. I could word it better but that's close enough. It's hard for that not to be political and ideological as it is socially and politically prescribed as to what those categories are, that they are protected, how and why along with the historical precedent for it.
The specific implementation of this concept actively in society is invalid on a moral/ethical, mathematical and logical basis. It manifests as a form of tunnel vision and category error not merely within the realm of ideas but one that people are forced to abide by being not merely regarded as something they are not but treated as something they are not. To simplify it, this creates a situation akin to if a defective diagnostic criteria in the hospital leads to people being treated for psychosis when instead they have a swollen appendix or any other such error of mistaking one thing for another. Similarly it's the equivalent to finding the innocent guilty in a court of law and this actually happened under this doctrine.
There is a mistake in using the word intersectional. An intersection is something that exists all over the place and is very simply. The concept we refer to is Intersectional Feminism. This idea of intersectionality isn't all that it seems. It's more than what it is. It is held to be important with meaning read into it to the extent that it becomes purely a social construct. You have two patients with cancer. One also has severe lupus and so might be considered worse off in that situation. Even worse if that patient also has Lyme's disease. This concept and very specific examples of this kind of situation is taken as though it's always like that and applied in inappropriate ways.
If you want to get an idea of one of the key problems in this I suggest you read the abstract entirely from top to bottom. Intersectional Feminism is racist and sexist. This is a kind of bias.
I am capable of doing the same paper as she has done but better. I wont as it's not worth the effort to prove the point. Smells certainly are an element of friction and attraction as well as many other things between people. In my paper I would talk about this. I would even mention racism and sexism. I know many examples off the top of my head, it's a very common thing and I remember conversations on the matter in the pub going back over two decades. It is relevant to class friction and in my work elsewhere I talk about it often.
A particular complaint for me is that of the proliferation of vanity and vice for profit. Remaining perfume to deodorant and giving it a masculine like technical appearance to expand the market to men and then using psychological and social methods to convince people to bully others or apply peer pressure to treat it as though as much a necessity in life as food and drink.
There are many other things I would likely discuss as it is present in literature. The smell and lose of smell of smoking. People eating mints to hide that they have been drinking. The smell of Indians. I have written a small piece on why other races and cultures sometimes smell of faeces to each other or their food does which is a developmental issue where as you grow up your olfactory system adapts to identify certain smells with faeces in relation to what passes through the food in terms of the odorants that don't digest and are passed through. There is also the matter of the common trope of women smelling like fish and bacterial vaginosis. There is then the reference in Dusk to Dawn of the different types of genitalia available. It's a really extensive topic and going through much of it to assemble things into a model and the various categories alone may be useful intellectual work. Funnily enough building abstract models is something I have specialised in.
You would love my paper and like it more than hers. It's a shame I'm not going to write it as I have other things more worthy of my efforts to worry about. The one thing that would make it better? It would not be biased. I would not be specifically focusing on only where it pertains to black women or violence against women. I would not be making ridiculous overstatements about it legitimising it. I would not simply be using it as an excuse to recite another doctrine, that is Intersectional Feminism with it's flawed and rigid view of reality.
It would be general and not sexist nor racist. Things go both ways. The upper class wearing perfume, especially the men is in various ways a putdown. The lower class not able to afford such excess are put down for not smelling nice or for smelling bad. In some cases this is a lie and behind the scenes another game is being played, one of supremacy of the rich over the poor who maintain their exclusivity and prominence through setting excessive standards only they can achieve such as having to wear brand name marked up shoes that are unaffordable to others. This is truly relevant if discussing inclusivity along with its counterpart in a social and moral context.
Everything is susceptible to misuse, misinterpretation or manipulation. I grow tired of giving disclaimers and I think this is the wrong approach. Something is wrong in our society where we hold the speaker responsible too much for the error of the speaker. The notion of sorry I misunderstood and so on has been eroded in a worldwide socio-behavioural blame game gone wrong.
I have in many places talked about concepts people reject when hijacked causing larger problems. Unfortunately I have not organised it well or indexed it so as to be able to pull up all of my material where I discuss on of these things. Cultural relativism originally referred to something else compared to what is put in practice today. These corruptions occur for a few reasons one simply being that someone at the time experienced it and is then just telling others of it where the understanding isn't as easy or accurate as the real thing. It's the difference between having a dog and having a friend with a dog.
Microaggressions is one example. That actually used to mean something where as now if you look up what it is you get nonsense. A very specific example and narrow set of subcategories is treated as if that's all it is ignoring all other cases. Many of the examples are subjective and lower the bar so much as to make one party so weak, sensitive and vulnerable that anything can be construed as aggression or an injury against them to the point of absurdity where treating it as an injury makes it more of an injury to the injuring party just to say you can't say that than saying that would be.
I am not quite sure what you are alluding in respect to being hasty. I think I have some idea. You mean jumping the gun or being prejudice purely based on the word intersectional? I think some people might do that. I am not. There is a flawed rendition of that concept that I am familiar with. It is Intersectional Feminism. I have sadly read enough of what at this point I have come to realise should be called scripture rather than literature to know that this is not just the rule of numbers and the few bad people or low quality takes. It's rotten to the core, mainstream and sadly not just a few mad people which you can find in any plurality guaranteed once it reaches a certain size. I have also fully read here abstract. She doesn't say it by name but in effect explicitly tells you that this is the version of that concept she is operating according to. The one that is indubitably deeply flawed.
In some respects she may be a victim. If you look at her sponsors they likely require or strongly encourage it. She has also likely learnt it from official sources. What she is doing is not coming from her. It's not her interpretation. She is repeating what's in the book and doing it by that book. I recognise it easily. I would give everyone even attention without bias or prejudice as you see applied here with a flawed methodology.
Just a piece of intrigue. Do you know that Intersectional Feminism overlaps with and in part derives from a model for profiling? Specifically for lawyers. That is who most likely has a case and one where the client is poor but the defendant is rich (woman versus man, black versus white) as the idea with this kind of civil law and lawsuit to transfer wealth where the lawyer gets the cut and if the defendant has no money or large wealth to transfer then it's pointless. You may find that quite eye opening. A hell of a lot of this ideology comes from the legal system. It's called Feminism but really isn't sourced from everyday women. In terms of profiling if the client is a straight white male after the law was passed then in that era he was very unlikely to have a case so on sight the lawyer discriminates and say he won't see the case he has more queued up than he can handle. A woman is likely to have a case and be discriminated against in that era. If they are black then even more so. If they are homosexual then more so still. It's just a matter of the calculating the probabilities of how likely it is someone has a case and one that will succeed in that specific period.
It overlaps with other things as well such as lesbianism imposing that kind of partnership on women. In that relationship you have a same sex relationship with no gender roles and a division of labour. One or both has to be the man in the relationship. This often leads to a struggle with many couples attempting to share the burden. Many in Feminism have made the mistake of not clarifying context when discussing intimate relationship models and then prescribing that based on one type to others where it's not really applicable. In a certain sense more egalitarian models for such a relationship may at least appear to make more sense in a relationship where both people are of the same type and in a sense are naturally more equal.
Anyway, it's all very complex. I could go on for years about this stuff. I hope at least some of this is eye opening. A lot of people would be shocked to find out that Feminism is more about being the perfect customer for a layer and layering than it is about being a woman. "Please type a shorter comment" now it tells me.
Agreed with the general point. Relatedly, Iβve been learning Portuguese and was surprised to learn that the adjective stemming from the root word βsmellβ is positive, good-smelling (cheiroso β root is cheiro, which means smell, the noun), while the analog in English (smelly) is negative. Point being itβs an interesting subject!
Can you expand on your first bullet? Specifically, the comparison of benign comments of peoplesβ smell compared pernicious comments of peoplesβ smell. This strikes me initially as a double standard.
Fair question. I think that, on average, people saying βwhite ppl smell like wet penniesβ causes less suffering (specifically in terms of social exclusion, chipping away at peopleβs confidence, childhood bullying, stigmatising social groups, making it harder for members of certain groups to date successfully, etc.) than people saying βIndians smell like curry, shit, etc.β Thatβs entirely contingent, and I have no hard data for you there, but thatβs my read on the situation.
Wouldn't this be relative to any group that is the minority within any other group? For example, if a white person grew up in a community that is majority black at the community level they are the minority. Then they would be subject to social exclusion, confidence chipped away, bullying, etc. by comments such as "white people smell like wet pennies." If the goal is to completely stamp out racism then I see this as a double standard that allows some racism but not others. To be at such a level of anti-racism as to write a dissertation about the racism of smells and language revolving around smell(s) says to me that it is also the level in which no degree of racism should be acceptable, not even racism to white people which some believe is a lesser form of racism.
Yeah I agree in some contexts some white people will suffer more from smell stereotypes than some Indians, and I agree that the badness of racism-induced suffering is race-blind. (I wouldnβt completely stamp out these sorts of jokes β sometimes theyβre funny and donβt punch down.) You might still focus your academic commentary on the smell stereotypes that wind up doing the most real world harm
For clarity, I'm also not against these jokes and also find them funny sometimes.
While I understand why this Ph.D would focus her efforts on stereotypes that cause the most harm within the world overall I still stand by my statement that your post seems to include a double standard. I see the point you're making now, with the understanding that your first bullet is made within the scope of explaining how words such as 'smelly' can be harmful rather than neutral adjectives. I still believe referring to racism towards white people as benign is an error as it does rely on a double standard that shouldn't exist in fair conversations about racism. If you don't agree, then I'll agree to disagree.
Well I think that in most contexts, jokes about wet pennies are of a fun, harmless nature. I donβt think we disagree on anything! All contingent social facts being equal, harmful racism against whites people is as bad as harmful racism against Indians. Thereβs just less harmful smell based racism against white people (I think)!
Very cool essay! I so wish I could afford to read more academia, too. And oh, I loved the book Perfume! Thank you for highlighting the work, and for noting the reactionary politics of certain media. Certain elements of our culture suck at being human beings.
Personally i have noticed a big trend in online discourse of grown adults calling each other "stinky," "she looks like she smells," "i know that room smells crazy," etc. It's like an adult resurgence of the most basic but somehow deeply cutting and insulting playground taunts. Maybe she can write something to explain this to me.
I think "studying literature" as a "career"/way that you expect to make money is generally a farce, counter-productive, and harmful to society. But with that said, if we overlook that and accept the premise that getting a doctorate in such a field is valid to begin with, then there's no reason to be particularly upset that someone who does so chooses to sub-specialize in "smelly racism." We already granted that they are doing something banal and useless with their life, the finer details beyond that don't really matter.
The main points of the thesis may be correct, but we're all missing something integral here. Her writing is awful! Academic writing is the most pretentious, jargon filled, meandering BS. Yes, the audience is for the ivory tower, but that doesn't make it well written.
(Important note: no one twitter actually read her abstract, so this doesn't apply to them)
"Olfactory discourse" -- Just say smell, Ally.
"Intersectional and wide-ranging study of olfactory oppression" -- what normal person speaks like this? Intersectional has a deep academic history to it, but it's borderline meaningless to anyone outside the academy. Nothing but buzzwords.
"I suggest that smell vey often invokes identity..." -- classic bad writing. Don't say I suggest or I think or I believe. JUST GET TO THE POINT. Also get rid of weasel words. "Smell invokes identity..."
"My thesis is particularly [weasel word!] attentive to tensions and ambivalences that complicate the 'typically bifurcated affective spectrum' [wtf?] of olfactory experiences, drawing-" blah blah blah.
Her writing is about smell, but I didn't experience a single smell throughout the piece. "Johnny smells like wet-dog shit, society says, but Johnny was forced into the slums without running water. He's punished for what society hasn't provided. And as such, smell exacerbates and enforces an unjust societal hierarchy."
WET-DOG-SHIT WRITING, ALLY.
AND BTW, IDC IF SMELL ENFORCES AN UNJUST HIERARCHY. THESE PEOPLE RENTED MY CAR FOR A WEEK AND NOW I CANT GET THE DISGUSTING SMELL OF CIGARETTES AND WEED OUT OF IT.
This is an example of the type of junk from the grievance studies and the fact that you pretend it isn't is indicative of how ideologically and intellectually corrupt and dishonest you are. Pathetic.
The first is part of a larger culture of academic conceit. This includes intellectual superiority complexes seen in people with they get a PhD. It is common for them to talk about relatively basic topics in complex language to make out like it's more intelligent. This is a basic form of sophistry. Pretentious is a better for for it. Using clever words to explain the mundane and common place. It also acts as if no one ever conceived of this before until it emerged in academic literature. There is this strange mindset in academia in which it is treated as though everyone in the world was blind to something until an academic spoke about it. A PhD in a field such as English can often be quite low level compared to other subjects. It doesn't have to be but can be. There is a frustration of people making out such PhD's to be a huge deal when it's really not.
Smell is a valid subject in literature. It's not all that remarkable and is often discussed. It's questionable as to whether that reaches the level of a PhD thesis. It potentially could if going deeply into it. It is also relevant in many respects to interactions between different groups. It can be identifying.
The entire thesis is spoilt by the insertion of a political ideology. This makes it equivalent to if someone did a thesis in Afghanistan in which they audited literature for violations of their moral code. That is, according to the subjective values and ethics of the Taliban. This is not truly an analytical piece. It's an attack piece. She is doing the work of the morality police. This turns it into complete garbage. It also makes it a hostile and antagonistic work. This is not what academic facilities are supposed to be for. It's meant to be a thesis in the subject of English as in the English language but in reality is pushing a political ideology. A despicable one. It is itself racist and sexist while then being judgemental of others for the same through the lens of its own guilty dogma. She is criticising work according to her opinions asserted as established fact and unethical ethical frameworks such as Black Supremacy. When I look at this it's much more a piece for social studies, sociology, women's studies, political studies, gender studies, etc. Those subjects in academia have become a mockery in the modern era. That aside the point stands, this isn't an English paper. This is what the typical sociology course would require for a dissertation.
This was my impression too. Smells as a motif in literature is certainly a valid topic. Insomuch as "intersectionality" may examine the effects of being more than one demographic or background, it can be useful. I guess.
The problem is the motif of odor, and the intersectionality (and really, 99.9% of intersectionality) was applied to the standard oppression narrative that permeates the Humanities. It was a different carpenter using the same hammer, believing all things are the same oppressive nail. It's all so predictable:
A doctoral dissertation is supposed to reveal a new discovery or contribute to the corpus of knowledge, but the topic of the paper seems like its more of a signaling method to show the author is in on the lingo, the paradigm, the game.
The general topic - how someone smells and how that relates to class, etc is interesting. The direction of her thesis isnβt interesting to me, but how strange that so many people are so offended that they take the time to write the diatribes they write. As inβ¦donβt they have something better to do with their time and emotional capacity?
"How can anyone spend time criticizing something I, THE SPECIAL ME, am fine with?"
Couldnβt disagree more. This is at the bottom of a fraction of a percent of interesting levels. I have almost the exact opposite intuition and find it obvious, and Iβm surprised you disagree.
Of all problems regarding racism, it probably ranks in the bottom of everything, and the way that some pieces of literature have used stereotypes about smell (that I was mostly only vaguely aware of in the first place) is almost irrelevant to modern problems. If police shootings of unarmed black people arenβt a statistical problem and Implicit Association Tests arenβt valid, why should we expect smell to matter or even be worth studying? Let alone what some past smell stereotypes have to do with today. Maybe in some other countries it could matter or something, but this isnβt just about those specific cases.
Itβs a waste of money and time to study such subjects. I think philosophers spend too much time on history of philosophy, but thatβs far more valuable than this!
Intersectionality is also silly nonsense that justifies other silliness like standpoint epistemology, but this comment is already long enough.
Wrt to βinteresting levelsβ, different strokes for different folks! I take it that these project wasnβt just about how smell ties in with racism, but the examples I gave probably only scratch the surface β whatever you think about olfactory racism in the West today or whatever, other countries are interesting, and so is the past! (I found this book about smell and racism in the slave trade β could be interesting if youβre into that period https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=R13bDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR8&dq=info:ZL3QZTt3tMQJ:scholar.google.com/&ots=S7r9YXKrLV&sig=5fufAHOX4t7PulvSrXpit1erwBw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false).
Seems to me most history of Phil is probably less valuable than this β contemporary literature is evidence for contemporary cultural tropes, and facts about contemporary culture more generally. (I firmly believe that there are people who can get a better read on where a culture is at from its literature than from social science β thatβs one reason I wish I read fiction more.) I havenβt read it, but Louksβs project might tell us things about contemptible culture. History of Phil mostly teaches us false thoughts people had in the past, where those people are often so free-thinking that their thoughts donβt give us a representative idea of what the average person in their time thought about things. (Huge generalisation, counterexamples, etc.)
Why is intersectionality nonsense? You might think the ways in which intersectionality is often applied to things is wrong or unhelpful, but the concept obviously picks out a real thing. And with a few exceptions (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-024-04661-5#:~:text=Possession%20of%20concepts%20prevents%20us,agents%20no%20matter%20how%20ideal.), exapanding your conceptual repertoire is a good thing epistemically.
I donβt think this is a matter of merely βdifferent strokes for different folks.β Thousands of tax dollars go to these graduate programs to pay students to do this stuff. It should be spent on something worth the time. This isnβt just someone spending their free time reading about the history of knitting, this is someone taking years and thousands of dollars to study something that likely creates overall negative utility and is likely poor quality in the first place (based on the standards of these fields). The history of knitting is probably more accurate and important to today.
History of philosophy is far more valuable because these thinkers have often had a massive impact on western civilization and therefore today. If we discover that a certain thinker has been misinterpreted (say something was published posthumously and they couldnβt correct misinterpretations), perhaps we could ponder what civilization would be like if we interpreted it correctly. Thereβs some positive value to that even if the return on investment isnβt worth it.
Concepts like intersectionality are inherently normative, frequently inaccurate, divisive, and contribute to the societal distrust wokism creates. This isnβt merely a descriptive term - its typical narrative is that people that belong to certain categories experience more oppression when they belong to more than one allegedly βoppressedβ group and implies that society puts down all of these people. It adds fuel to the extremely absurd βstandpoint epistemologyβ fire that frequently tells white men they canβt diagnose societal problems because of their race. Such concepts are useless and epistemically harmful because they are inaccurate and create overall negative utility. Then, they further divide society and turn it against institutions like wokeness does in general.
I'd read that!
Agreed. The specific thesis and methodology of the dissertation may be questionable (or not) but the topic itself is intrinsically interesting.
Also, smell is one area where literary analysis is probably optimal method since it is virtually the only medium where olfactory perception is articulated and recorded (not painting, not photography, not film, not music, not history, etc.).
Good point!
There are certain visible representations of odour. This can include images of people responding to smell such as holding their noses. A cloud, usually of a certain kind of foggy green often indicates smell. A few wave lines may also be used often in combination with heat as well. I recommend checking out the Johnny Fartpants strip from the Viz.
You're right! That reminds me of pigpen from the Peanuts comics.
βIntersectionalityβ is a self-evidently useful concept; it helps us describe certain social phenomena that would be harder to describe without it.
Are all useful concepts self-evident? I doubt it - and what's striking about 'intersectionality' is just how culturally embedded it has become over time, even in academic adjacent spaces. It seems that's the thrust of its self-evidence: what it became. In any case, I think it's awesome how a concept from an obscure paper in 1991 can flower so widely like that.
As for this paper in question, it seems kind of intriguing to be honest. But even if it weren't you have to wonder why an audience orders of magnitude wider than would likely read even "legitimate" academic theses would behave this way towards her + this post. (Actually, no - you don't have to wonder at all, actually.) But it's got to be some sort of spiritual low-point for a person to take the time to say something mean to an budding academic about a thesis she wrote and is proud of. This isn't a high bar. Like, all one would have to do is just not do that and instead go to the grocery store or read the news or sweep off the patio or something.
Hey Brandon!
I don't think that all useful concepts are self-evidently useful - but it seems to me that with intersectionality, we have instances of, say, sexism that are racialised, and the concept of intersectionality picks out those cases. It's not self-evident that intersectionality picks out a real social phenomenon in a Cartesian sense, but, I don't know, it seems pretty clear that there's this thing -e.g., racialized sexism - and then this concept - intersectionality - that picks it out. Am I missing something do you think?
Only in the sense that it might be over-engineering what could be done with good old fashioned discrete identity categories, combined. I think the insight with intersectionality is that the combination itself creates residual internal tensions, which reenforces the intersection as greater than the sum of its parts, so to speak.
Only vaguely related, but something I've been really concerned of late (basically since the emergence of social media) is dissolution of "internal conversations" to help manage things that are almost impossible to social-engineer around - say, for example, "machismo culture" is being criticized along feminist lines. I can see where "what Latino women say amongst themselves" might be different than around white-girl feminists, insofar as they have more complex relationships and proximities with the complexities of it. This isn't about right or wrong, but about navigating perspectival tensions, and the flattening of social space really strained this. Obviously intersectionality relates to this, and I think etiquette is going to also play a major role. The other day I read an article about the Dark Forest Internet, and about how there is a sort of re-emergence of personal silos (as opposed to toxic ideological silos in the open system) and it's kind of intriguing to me. I realize this is somewhat off topic, but it's been on my mind and what the hell.
The UN is a flawed organisation but it sometimes gets something right here or there. Of relevance are the UNESCO statements on race. These are sometimes counter productive denying science and differences rather than accepting the truth and accepting the differences between people. It is however not all nonsense. It was originally drafted as an anti-Nazi declaration following the second world war.
> Such differences can in no case serve as a pretext for any rank-ordered classification of nations or peoples.
Intersectional Feminism does just this with its racial classism which ranks peoples of the various races according to their perceived victimhood or oppression for example. It is inappropriately groupwise rather than examining matters on an individual basis. Intersecting is also subdividing. This is where it is stupid. It's not all that progressive as if it went all the way you end up with the individual which is by definition the point at which you can no longer divide. Indivisible. This excerpt from the UNESCO statement is one of the criteria albeit a little briefly stated for identifying Nazi ideology. The term Femnazi becomes formal in this context. I hate to follow Godwin's law but it's inevitable when talking about actual real life every day neo-Nazis.
Intersectional Feminism is more than just the simply boring concept of intersectionality. It is a kind of merger of rankings for protected characteristics. It combined female supremacy, black supremacy and homosexual supremacy, specifically lesbians. Few people are told this. You might miss it because it's really too boring to read for most who go along with it. I sadly have read a fair amount of it. I've also read the Koran. The pain and suffering I went through to accomplish that. The worst thing about it is that it's just so trite, you have to force yourself to read it. It's not like reading something interesting such as a Terry Pratchett novel.
Some of it derives from what were legitimate concepts but that have been spun to support this kind of bigotry. In some places it's a mess with conflicts of interests merging in common cause.
Part of it derives from various legal disputes and legal theory with nonsense having been allowed to leak in. A factory is racist and sexist. It doesn't hire females or people of a sub-Saharan African heritage. Those who would have got the job but were not hired all sue and get equal compensation. A black woman complains that she should have gotten double that of the white woman because she was discriminated against twice over. The counter argument to this is that it made no material difference. One is enough and the damages are the same. When testing this logically as a part of a legal test which is rare you would say that it is false because it would assert that she was not hired twice at the same time but it could have only have happen once at the same time. The counter argument to that is that logic is racist.
It's a useful concept indeed and you might therefore want to ask what exactly it is that it is being used for.
βSome of it derives from what were legitimate concepts but that have been spun to support this kind of bigotry. In some places it's a mess with conflicts of interests merging in common cause.β
You seem to be a little hasty here. Youβre taking an admittedly βlegitimateβ concept, and throwing it into a soup of misapplication, which is hard to argue with, both technically and in spirit (it can be very harmful, yes).
A concept and its development are different things. Free speech is an admittedly βlegitimateβ concept, but yelling βfireβ isnβt. What about hate speech rallies? In German theyβre illegal (theyβve got some awkward historical stuff to sort out); in the US theyβre generally not. Pardon the crass comparison, but do you have any idea how many eccentric, harmful and downright ridiculous variants on Judeo-Christianity have been over the millennia? We donβt hold Jesus accountable for some cult in Ohio that makes people save their toe-nail clippings and marry their daughters off at age 14. But somehow Kimberlee Crenshaw is responsible for the shit-fit middle America is having over a gender-transitioned kid wanting to play field hockey, and its residual blowback. (I know this wasnβt your exact point; Iβm just sayinβ - the disproportionality of ire has been just off the charts this decade.)
Iβm actually sympathetic to some of your criticism here, but more insofar as how susceptible it is to manipulation rather than the conceptual heavy lifting it can do. Honestly, I think intersectionality is all the more useful now in how fractured political coalitions are in the world.
At its core, for what itβs worth, I take intersectionality to be little more than a critical awareness of the multiple vectors of identity in any given circumstance, and how they impact power in systems etc when it comes to justice, harms, etc. As you say, I donβt find this especially controversial. In fact, itβs rather obvious at this point, but I think thatβs in part because its become so much a part of the background assumptions in culture, which to my main point is the best someone engineering a new concept could hope for.
In any case, I take the point Amos was making as upstream of all of this. Just because something is useful doesnβt mean itβs good.
Thanks for your thoughts.
I think that application is more applicable than development. Implementation and theory versus practice. There is a little more to it that that. There are a lot of things that originally were relevant even if flawed in their context. Many people who were not the originators then misunderstand it. That's not to say that originators are always right but even where they are there are concepts that end up in one way or another corrupted, deteriorated and perverted.
The concept of intersection on many levels is a really basic generic concept that's broad and abstract. It's not some kind of remarkable idea to apply it to many things. It's just a fairly generic broad concept. I have worked with it extensively as a systems engineer, database everything (programmer, designer, administrator, etc) among other things. In relation to anthropological considerations of various types of categories of people weighed against various hardships in history the attention given to it is oddly specific.
It often appears self condescending like when someone quite simply is amazed by the Venn Diagram as though something holy when it's really basic even without any kind of background in things such as set theory. This is because it's not really about an intellectual pursuit. It's the manifestation of social conflict and wrestling various resources including monetary, emotional, social and cognitive toward certain people or groups. There is almost always an ulterior motive involved. I think that we are quibbling over intersectionality and Intersectionality.
I'm not entirely sure to what point you are making a joke versus raising a point versus a little confused. The author is incorrect in using the lower case version in her abstract. I strongly suspect if I were to peer review her paper there would be many corrections required. I am very almost certain of it. Even outside of Feminist Theory the larger ideological scope of the term in this context would be something like the intersection of oppression based on protected characteristics. I could word it better but that's close enough. It's hard for that not to be political and ideological as it is socially and politically prescribed as to what those categories are, that they are protected, how and why along with the historical precedent for it.
The specific implementation of this concept actively in society is invalid on a moral/ethical, mathematical and logical basis. It manifests as a form of tunnel vision and category error not merely within the realm of ideas but one that people are forced to abide by being not merely regarded as something they are not but treated as something they are not. To simplify it, this creates a situation akin to if a defective diagnostic criteria in the hospital leads to people being treated for psychosis when instead they have a swollen appendix or any other such error of mistaking one thing for another. Similarly it's the equivalent to finding the innocent guilty in a court of law and this actually happened under this doctrine.
There is a mistake in using the word intersectional. An intersection is something that exists all over the place and is very simply. The concept we refer to is Intersectional Feminism. This idea of intersectionality isn't all that it seems. It's more than what it is. It is held to be important with meaning read into it to the extent that it becomes purely a social construct. You have two patients with cancer. One also has severe lupus and so might be considered worse off in that situation. Even worse if that patient also has Lyme's disease. This concept and very specific examples of this kind of situation is taken as though it's always like that and applied in inappropriate ways.
If you want to get an idea of one of the key problems in this I suggest you read the abstract entirely from top to bottom. Intersectional Feminism is racist and sexist. This is a kind of bias.
I am capable of doing the same paper as she has done but better. I wont as it's not worth the effort to prove the point. Smells certainly are an element of friction and attraction as well as many other things between people. In my paper I would talk about this. I would even mention racism and sexism. I know many examples off the top of my head, it's a very common thing and I remember conversations on the matter in the pub going back over two decades. It is relevant to class friction and in my work elsewhere I talk about it often.
A particular complaint for me is that of the proliferation of vanity and vice for profit. Remaining perfume to deodorant and giving it a masculine like technical appearance to expand the market to men and then using psychological and social methods to convince people to bully others or apply peer pressure to treat it as though as much a necessity in life as food and drink.
There are many other things I would likely discuss as it is present in literature. The smell and lose of smell of smoking. People eating mints to hide that they have been drinking. The smell of Indians. I have written a small piece on why other races and cultures sometimes smell of faeces to each other or their food does which is a developmental issue where as you grow up your olfactory system adapts to identify certain smells with faeces in relation to what passes through the food in terms of the odorants that don't digest and are passed through. There is also the matter of the common trope of women smelling like fish and bacterial vaginosis. There is then the reference in Dusk to Dawn of the different types of genitalia available. It's a really extensive topic and going through much of it to assemble things into a model and the various categories alone may be useful intellectual work. Funnily enough building abstract models is something I have specialised in.
You would love my paper and like it more than hers. It's a shame I'm not going to write it as I have other things more worthy of my efforts to worry about. The one thing that would make it better? It would not be biased. I would not be specifically focusing on only where it pertains to black women or violence against women. I would not be making ridiculous overstatements about it legitimising it. I would not simply be using it as an excuse to recite another doctrine, that is Intersectional Feminism with it's flawed and rigid view of reality.
I'm not entirely sure to what point you are making a joke versus raising a point versus a little confused.β
I get this a lot, yes.
It would be general and not sexist nor racist. Things go both ways. The upper class wearing perfume, especially the men is in various ways a putdown. The lower class not able to afford such excess are put down for not smelling nice or for smelling bad. In some cases this is a lie and behind the scenes another game is being played, one of supremacy of the rich over the poor who maintain their exclusivity and prominence through setting excessive standards only they can achieve such as having to wear brand name marked up shoes that are unaffordable to others. This is truly relevant if discussing inclusivity along with its counterpart in a social and moral context.
Everything is susceptible to misuse, misinterpretation or manipulation. I grow tired of giving disclaimers and I think this is the wrong approach. Something is wrong in our society where we hold the speaker responsible too much for the error of the speaker. The notion of sorry I misunderstood and so on has been eroded in a worldwide socio-behavioural blame game gone wrong.
I have in many places talked about concepts people reject when hijacked causing larger problems. Unfortunately I have not organised it well or indexed it so as to be able to pull up all of my material where I discuss on of these things. Cultural relativism originally referred to something else compared to what is put in practice today. These corruptions occur for a few reasons one simply being that someone at the time experienced it and is then just telling others of it where the understanding isn't as easy or accurate as the real thing. It's the difference between having a dog and having a friend with a dog.
Microaggressions is one example. That actually used to mean something where as now if you look up what it is you get nonsense. A very specific example and narrow set of subcategories is treated as if that's all it is ignoring all other cases. Many of the examples are subjective and lower the bar so much as to make one party so weak, sensitive and vulnerable that anything can be construed as aggression or an injury against them to the point of absurdity where treating it as an injury makes it more of an injury to the injuring party just to say you can't say that than saying that would be.
I am not quite sure what you are alluding in respect to being hasty. I think I have some idea. You mean jumping the gun or being prejudice purely based on the word intersectional? I think some people might do that. I am not. There is a flawed rendition of that concept that I am familiar with. It is Intersectional Feminism. I have sadly read enough of what at this point I have come to realise should be called scripture rather than literature to know that this is not just the rule of numbers and the few bad people or low quality takes. It's rotten to the core, mainstream and sadly not just a few mad people which you can find in any plurality guaranteed once it reaches a certain size. I have also fully read here abstract. She doesn't say it by name but in effect explicitly tells you that this is the version of that concept she is operating according to. The one that is indubitably deeply flawed.
In some respects she may be a victim. If you look at her sponsors they likely require or strongly encourage it. She has also likely learnt it from official sources. What she is doing is not coming from her. It's not her interpretation. She is repeating what's in the book and doing it by that book. I recognise it easily. I would give everyone even attention without bias or prejudice as you see applied here with a flawed methodology.
Just a piece of intrigue. Do you know that Intersectional Feminism overlaps with and in part derives from a model for profiling? Specifically for lawyers. That is who most likely has a case and one where the client is poor but the defendant is rich (woman versus man, black versus white) as the idea with this kind of civil law and lawsuit to transfer wealth where the lawyer gets the cut and if the defendant has no money or large wealth to transfer then it's pointless. You may find that quite eye opening. A hell of a lot of this ideology comes from the legal system. It's called Feminism but really isn't sourced from everyday women. In terms of profiling if the client is a straight white male after the law was passed then in that era he was very unlikely to have a case so on sight the lawyer discriminates and say he won't see the case he has more queued up than he can handle. A woman is likely to have a case and be discriminated against in that era. If they are black then even more so. If they are homosexual then more so still. It's just a matter of the calculating the probabilities of how likely it is someone has a case and one that will succeed in that specific period.
It overlaps with other things as well such as lesbianism imposing that kind of partnership on women. In that relationship you have a same sex relationship with no gender roles and a division of labour. One or both has to be the man in the relationship. This often leads to a struggle with many couples attempting to share the burden. Many in Feminism have made the mistake of not clarifying context when discussing intimate relationship models and then prescribing that based on one type to others where it's not really applicable. In a certain sense more egalitarian models for such a relationship may at least appear to make more sense in a relationship where both people are of the same type and in a sense are naturally more equal.
Anyway, it's all very complex. I could go on for years about this stuff. I hope at least some of this is eye opening. A lot of people would be shocked to find out that Feminism is more about being the perfect customer for a layer and layering than it is about being a woman. "Please type a shorter comment" now it tells me.
Agreed with the general point. Relatedly, Iβve been learning Portuguese and was surprised to learn that the adjective stemming from the root word βsmellβ is positive, good-smelling (cheiroso β root is cheiro, which means smell, the noun), while the analog in English (smelly) is negative. Point being itβs an interesting subject!
Can you expand on your first bullet? Specifically, the comparison of benign comments of peoplesβ smell compared pernicious comments of peoplesβ smell. This strikes me initially as a double standard.
Fair question. I think that, on average, people saying βwhite ppl smell like wet penniesβ causes less suffering (specifically in terms of social exclusion, chipping away at peopleβs confidence, childhood bullying, stigmatising social groups, making it harder for members of certain groups to date successfully, etc.) than people saying βIndians smell like curry, shit, etc.β Thatβs entirely contingent, and I have no hard data for you there, but thatβs my read on the situation.
Wouldn't this be relative to any group that is the minority within any other group? For example, if a white person grew up in a community that is majority black at the community level they are the minority. Then they would be subject to social exclusion, confidence chipped away, bullying, etc. by comments such as "white people smell like wet pennies." If the goal is to completely stamp out racism then I see this as a double standard that allows some racism but not others. To be at such a level of anti-racism as to write a dissertation about the racism of smells and language revolving around smell(s) says to me that it is also the level in which no degree of racism should be acceptable, not even racism to white people which some believe is a lesser form of racism.
Yeah I agree in some contexts some white people will suffer more from smell stereotypes than some Indians, and I agree that the badness of racism-induced suffering is race-blind. (I wouldnβt completely stamp out these sorts of jokes β sometimes theyβre funny and donβt punch down.) You might still focus your academic commentary on the smell stereotypes that wind up doing the most real world harm
For clarity, I'm also not against these jokes and also find them funny sometimes.
While I understand why this Ph.D would focus her efforts on stereotypes that cause the most harm within the world overall I still stand by my statement that your post seems to include a double standard. I see the point you're making now, with the understanding that your first bullet is made within the scope of explaining how words such as 'smelly' can be harmful rather than neutral adjectives. I still believe referring to racism towards white people as benign is an error as it does rely on a double standard that shouldn't exist in fair conversations about racism. If you don't agree, then I'll agree to disagree.
Well I think that in most contexts, jokes about wet pennies are of a fun, harmless nature. I donβt think we disagree on anything! All contingent social facts being equal, harmful racism against whites people is as bad as harmful racism against Indians. Thereβs just less harmful smell based racism against white people (I think)!
I agree with that, I appreciate the nice discussion!
Very cool essay! I so wish I could afford to read more academia, too. And oh, I loved the book Perfume! Thank you for highlighting the work, and for noting the reactionary politics of certain media. Certain elements of our culture suck at being human beings.
I hope that Dr Louks is well supported in dealing with the toxicity of social media.
Personally i have noticed a big trend in online discourse of grown adults calling each other "stinky," "she looks like she smells," "i know that room smells crazy," etc. It's like an adult resurgence of the most basic but somehow deeply cutting and insulting playground taunts. Maybe she can write something to explain this to me.
I think "studying literature" as a "career"/way that you expect to make money is generally a farce, counter-productive, and harmful to society. But with that said, if we overlook that and accept the premise that getting a doctorate in such a field is valid to begin with, then there's no reason to be particularly upset that someone who does so chooses to sub-specialize in "smelly racism." We already granted that they are doing something banal and useless with their life, the finer details beyond that don't really matter.
The main points of the thesis may be correct, but we're all missing something integral here. Her writing is awful! Academic writing is the most pretentious, jargon filled, meandering BS. Yes, the audience is for the ivory tower, but that doesn't make it well written.
(Important note: no one twitter actually read her abstract, so this doesn't apply to them)
"Olfactory discourse" -- Just say smell, Ally.
"Intersectional and wide-ranging study of olfactory oppression" -- what normal person speaks like this? Intersectional has a deep academic history to it, but it's borderline meaningless to anyone outside the academy. Nothing but buzzwords.
"I suggest that smell vey often invokes identity..." -- classic bad writing. Don't say I suggest or I think or I believe. JUST GET TO THE POINT. Also get rid of weasel words. "Smell invokes identity..."
"My thesis is particularly [weasel word!] attentive to tensions and ambivalences that complicate the 'typically bifurcated affective spectrum' [wtf?] of olfactory experiences, drawing-" blah blah blah.
Her writing is about smell, but I didn't experience a single smell throughout the piece. "Johnny smells like wet-dog shit, society says, but Johnny was forced into the slums without running water. He's punished for what society hasn't provided. And as such, smell exacerbates and enforces an unjust societal hierarchy."
WET-DOG-SHIT WRITING, ALLY.
AND BTW, IDC IF SMELL ENFORCES AN UNJUST HIERARCHY. THESE PEOPLE RENTED MY CAR FOR A WEEK AND NOW I CANT GET THE DISGUSTING SMELL OF CIGARETTES AND WEED OUT OF IT.
LOW CLASS TRASH. WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD.
This is an example of the type of junk from the grievance studies and the fact that you pretend it isn't is indicative of how ideologically and intellectually corrupt and dishonest you are. Pathetic.
There are two issues with her thesis.
The first is part of a larger culture of academic conceit. This includes intellectual superiority complexes seen in people with they get a PhD. It is common for them to talk about relatively basic topics in complex language to make out like it's more intelligent. This is a basic form of sophistry. Pretentious is a better for for it. Using clever words to explain the mundane and common place. It also acts as if no one ever conceived of this before until it emerged in academic literature. There is this strange mindset in academia in which it is treated as though everyone in the world was blind to something until an academic spoke about it. A PhD in a field such as English can often be quite low level compared to other subjects. It doesn't have to be but can be. There is a frustration of people making out such PhD's to be a huge deal when it's really not.
Smell is a valid subject in literature. It's not all that remarkable and is often discussed. It's questionable as to whether that reaches the level of a PhD thesis. It potentially could if going deeply into it. It is also relevant in many respects to interactions between different groups. It can be identifying.
The entire thesis is spoilt by the insertion of a political ideology. This makes it equivalent to if someone did a thesis in Afghanistan in which they audited literature for violations of their moral code. That is, according to the subjective values and ethics of the Taliban. This is not truly an analytical piece. It's an attack piece. She is doing the work of the morality police. This turns it into complete garbage. It also makes it a hostile and antagonistic work. This is not what academic facilities are supposed to be for. It's meant to be a thesis in the subject of English as in the English language but in reality is pushing a political ideology. A despicable one. It is itself racist and sexist while then being judgemental of others for the same through the lens of its own guilty dogma. She is criticising work according to her opinions asserted as established fact and unethical ethical frameworks such as Black Supremacy. When I look at this it's much more a piece for social studies, sociology, women's studies, political studies, gender studies, etc. Those subjects in academia have become a mockery in the modern era. That aside the point stands, this isn't an English paper. This is what the typical sociology course would require for a dissertation.
This was my impression too. Smells as a motif in literature is certainly a valid topic. Insomuch as "intersectionality" may examine the effects of being more than one demographic or background, it can be useful. I guess.
The problem is the motif of odor, and the intersectionality (and really, 99.9% of intersectionality) was applied to the standard oppression narrative that permeates the Humanities. It was a different carpenter using the same hammer, believing all things are the same oppressive nail. It's all so predictable:
A doctoral dissertation is supposed to reveal a new discovery or contribute to the corpus of knowledge, but the topic of the paper seems like its more of a signaling method to show the author is in on the lingo, the paradigm, the game.
You might find this interview with two social scientists questioning James Lindsay on The Grievance Studies affair interesting and useful for helping to make your mind up about what exactly it shows ( https://podtail.com/podcast/very-bad-wizards-very-bad-wizards/episode-118-we-don-t-love-them-hoax/ )
How pathetic that this brainless fruit loop is enabled and supported by unthinking dolts rushing to her aid. She should be rightly shamed for idiocy.