William Tullett
In this week’s Lecture, Will Tullet from the University of York asked important questions he’s been thinking about: “What do stink bombs do and how/why did people use them? How did their use vary in different countries? How did they differ from previous smelly weapons and/or attempts at smelly disruption of public events?”
“This paper uses a range of sources, primarily newspapers and government documents, to trace the history of stink bombs as a tool of political action across the west during the 1920s and 1930s. Having contextualised the emergence of the stink bomb within the longer history of weaponised smells, the paper then traces which political actors deployed stink bombs, how they used them, and when governments attempted to ban or otherwise mitigate their use. It ends by opening up a broader question about the fate of smell as a tool of activism and/or political repression and, in the context of the western media’s ongoing obsession with cancel culture and de-platforming, asks what counts as ”violence” and ”freedom” when it comes to smell’s use in public space.”
