****Nose can not fast. The taste buds can stop eating and drinking. The sense of sight can fast to see things "dirty." Hearing, can be "cleaned" through fasting from listless listening. While a break from sexual activity is one of fasting for the senses of touch. But the smell will always lie around the human nose. The sense of smell will not reject the aroma to enter the fragile lungs.****
Does the endless work of the nose make it the upper senses? The reality is not. Anthony Synnott in the Social Body: Symbolism, Self and Society (2007) once conducted a small survey. "If you lose one of your senses," ... "which senses would you lose?" Synnott asked some of his students. The result, about 57 percent (out of a total of 182 samples), responded to the sense of smell, followed by the taste bud. They chose to have no nose and tongue, rather than having no eyes and ears.
In the history of the construction of the sense of the senses, the smell must be satisfied in the middle board-even down. Aristotle for example, divides the hierarchy of the senses firmly. The senses of vision become the main senses. Followed by hearing, smell, tasting, and touch. The last two senses are considered as senses close to the animals. While vision and hearing are the senses that can bring people to God. Between the Godhead and the animals, the sense of smell is.
Freud is the same as Aristotle. He even considers "that smell is a typical animal sensation" (in Synnott, 2007: 294). The phenomenon of sexuality in psychoanalysis does not place olfaction as one of its phases. Freud only mentions the oral phase, the anal phase, the urethral phase, the phallic phase, and the genital phase. Aristotle saw the less dimensionless dimension of the Godhead. While Freud viewed olfactory as the animal senses. Like a dog sniffing. He also did not mention the correlation of the sense of smell with the phase of sexuality.
Grenouille's Nose
There is no more solemn nose than Jean-Baptiste Grenouille's nose, the main character in the novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Suskind, 2010). Suskind-can be said-created a character to resist Aristotle's and Freud's hegemony of vision.
Grenouille was born in the 18th century in Paris. Four centuries after the waves of the Renaissance first appeared in Italy. Paris, at that time became the most rotten place in the world. Born in the most rotting place in the world, Grenouille actually has an incredibly sharp sense of smell. He can smell the smells of various things and creatures, then collect them in the aroma library in his mind.
Grenouille's nose is a typical Renaissance nose. Secular noses that are not too ignorant of God. Whatever will be done Grenouille origin can satisfy the desire of his nose will aroma. When an ascetic in a cave, Grenouille does not do it for penance or seek revelation. "There is absolutely no God in his mind .... This solitude is done purely on the basis of personal pleasure, to be closer to oneself "(ibid .: 161). Ironically, Grenouille who can smell anything, just can not smell his own body.
His body has no aroma.
Begin he made a concoction of perfume that can make his body flavorful. Tumbalnya, the scent of the 25 virgins should be extracted into a bottle of perfume that effectual. One drop makes the whole town thrilled in the intoxicating sex fantasy. Young-old, male-female, his nose was inhaled by the perfume of Grenouille. Be the biggest sex party at that time.
But poor Grenouille can not enjoy it. In the middle of the party, "Grenouille realized that he could never find joy in love. The joy that has always been gained from hatred. In a condition of hatred and hate "(ibid .: 300). Grenouille has finally disappeared along with unlimited human desires. After sprinkling a bottle of homemade perfume throughout the body, he became a victim of cannibalism people who get drunk in the scent of perfume 25 virgins.
Aroma and Sexual Violence
Gender construction of scents makes men as scented creatures. Alcohol, tobacco, sweat, becomes a distinctive aroma in the body of the lekaki. While women are socially constructed as a creature with a delicious aroma and fragrant. This kind of construction makes women into beings that men should "enjoy".
"The tradition in male literature is ambivalent in character. Men enjoy the smell of women, as the French tradition says 'the soft smell exhaled by women is softer, more intoxicating than all the perfumes of Arabia' (Corbin, 1986, in Synnott, 2007: 315). The statement was written by a Frenchman in 1846. A century after Grenouille lived.
Suskind - through Grenouille - wants to alert readers to optimize and control the sense of smell. The relation between aroma and sexuality, present in the Suskind novel, is not impossible to be present in the context of the 21st century in Indonesia.
What makes for example, sexual violence against women is very difficult to stop. This country is already in the level of hyper-violence. "Although everything seems to be now a bit late, because our nation has now surpassed that violence, in which violence becomes a pleasure, amusement, and aesthetic." (Piliang, 2006: 86).
What a curse! Violence becomes fun, entertainment, and aesthetic. (to the extent that a hoe becomes a means of satisfying sexuality!). Yasraf A. Piliang even writes that violence is a creativity that is constructive. When this thesis we amini, will open our eyes how the perpetrators of violence are skilled people, smart, and creative. Or even a genius like Jean-Baptiste Grenouille.
Though a cruel genius, Grenouille is not the only one to blame for the violence. He just wants the presence of his body realized by others. However, after dripping perfume, he became a victim of the cruelty of humans who thirst for scent. Is the scent the reason for the violent wave that occurred? Does the scent become the motive of the men raping minors? Are aromas being sought when "enjoying" the bodies of the girls and then killing her violently ?!