Orchids, Arums, and Tiger Lilies: Queer Olfactory Culture and Tropical Plants (France, 1885-1905)

Résumé En

In 19th c. France, a general appreciation for perfume is already considered as effeminate and a cause moral suspicion. Indeed, the preference for the strange, overwhelming fragrances associated with tropical plants is especially perceived as a social oversight, an ethical transgression, thus potentially indicating ‘sexual inversion’ and racial ‘degeneracy’ (Wicky; Borloz, ‘Le Parfum de l’Inverti’). In that regard, the cultural context of late 19th century France, with its instrumental role into developing fragrance as a commodity fit for mass-consumption (Williams), can help outline the queer-coding of certain aromatic practices related to non-European botanicals, their raw materials, and their scents, especially in the context of Decadent subculture (Krueger, Perfume on the Page 207–36). While pathologized and sensationalized ‘sexual inversion’ becomes a mainstream object of collective discourse in late 19th century France (Borloz, ‘Le Parfum de l’Inverti’), I will show how queer culture purposefully reclaims the monstrous connotations surrounding aromatic tropical flora to reject heteronormative fragrance etiquette and thus subvert supposedly innate, or ‘natural’, olfactory, and sexual preferences. The perceived monstrosity of tropical plants and their scents, as it is associated with queer aesthetics, bodies, sexual, and social practices, supports a queer ecological re-reading of Decadence olfactory culture, in line with concepts ‘that apply simultaneously to sexuality and nature, ecology, environment, and animals – such as fluidity, intimacy, kinship, porosity, and toxicity’ (Seymour, ‘Queer Ecologies and Queer Environmentalisms’ 111).