Autumnal Nausea: An Olfactory, Feminist Digital Politics of Place

Keywords: feminist digital natures, feminist political ecology, health, place, smell
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 61

Abstract

In 1998, I cared for my mother during her treatments for late-stage cervical cancer. Ondansetron (Zofran) enabled her to leave her bed. A serotonin 5-HT3 receptor antagonist, it blocks serotonin in the part of the brain stem responsible for the involuntary vomiting reflex. As a teenager at the time, I had no embodied understanding of the power of nausea and of how sense of smell could shape one’s mobility, emotion and sense of wellbeing in a place so fundamentally. Many years later, I struggled to explain to my doctor that the smell of the autumn season in Vermont—fermenting apples, “pumpkin-spiced” everything, Michaelmas daisies (blue Asters), ragweed—was still making me nauseous three years after my pregnancy. I had spent autumn 2017 bedbound with hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) until my insurance provider approved the off-label use of Ondansetron. This drug and generous pregnant people who shared their experiences with HG on YouTube together made it possible for me to be in a landscape that otherwise triggered vomiting. My new daily routes from home to work and back followed what I call a temporary and acute olfactory attunement to place. Smell is also gaining more attention in the context of COVID-19-induced anosmia and parosmia as thousands of people attempt to adapt to changes in the smells of daily life. This paper mixes multiple auto-methods with feminist political ecology, feminist science and technology studies and critical disability studies perspectives to articulate an olfactory, feminist digital politics of place.