ABSTRACT
Due to its marginal and repressed status in contemporary Western culture, smell is hardly ever considered as a political vehicle or a medium for the expression of class allegiances and struggles. None the less, olfaction does indeed enter into the construction of relations of power in our society, on both popular and institutional levels. In keeping with the modern regime of olfactory silence, the centre (the power elite) governs from a position of olfactory neutrality. Formerly power was personal, and therefore imbued with the smell of those who wielded it; now it has become impersonal and abstract, and therefore odourless.
