Finishing Touch: Technology, Sensation, and the Modern American Body, 1880-1970.

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the rise of a set of sensory technologies that transformed rituals of bodily care in modern American culture. It spotlights four specific sensory features that have become iconic and intuitive experiences of modern personal care: the scent of synthetic musk, the smooth white bar of soap, heaping handfuls of fluffy foam, and the vigorous blast of aerosol spray. As these four case studies show, these sensory experiences were not inherent to or necessary for the strict function of cleaning; rather, their value was defined by another equally important function: crafting the feeling of cleanliness. At the turn of the 20th century, consumer goods manufacturers began to research and manipulate these sensory technologies, and they would soon discover that selling sensory perception—an uplifting aroma, a refreshing mist—was a powerful engine of profit. In these early decades, industrialists and consumers alike celebrated the ever-finer manipulations of smell, color, and touch that flooded shops and promised an unprecedented degree of control over the human body. And yet, the very same technologies provoked fears of over-manipulation, over-modernization, and over-civilization of the human animal. Indeed, in the years after WWII, the chemicals that enabled such pleasing sensations were found to be environmental pollutants, and public outcry led to regulatory pressure and outright bans. Consumers struggled to reckon with such small, humble, and pleasurable products that carried alarming consequences for human and environmental health. This dissertation, too, grapples with the enormous historical significance of such seemingly ordinary and simple technologies. By recovering their surprising trajectories through colonial plantations, warzones, chemical labs, and psychological consulting rooms, I explore the technological and cultural meanings of these “small” rituals of care that contain vast histories, shaped by the forces of Western imperialism, industrial chemistry, mass manufacturing, gender politics, and the rise of a mass consumer culture that idealized new physical sensations as hallmarks of modern selfhood and the good life.