Introduction. Olfaction, mémoire et signification au croisement des disciplines

ABSTRACT: This introduction outlines the theoretical and methodological horizon of the volume by positioning olfaction as a critical site for rethinking perception, memory, and the narrativization of experience. Rather than treating smell as an autonomous object of inquiry or as a marginal sensory curiosity, the essay approaches it as a transversal operator through which biological processes, cultural norms, symbolic values, affective intensities, and forms of life intersect. In this perspective, olfaction becomes a privileged test case for challenging standard models of perception and autobiographical memory, especially those grounded in predominantly visual and linguistic paradigms. The essay also argues that Marcel Proust occupies a strategic place within this interdisciplinary constellation. The socalled «Proust effect» is considered not simply as a literary topos or as a canonical example of odor-evoked memory, but as a moving theoretical reference that has circulated across literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, semiotics, and education. Proust’s work is therefore read less as an anticipation of contemporary science than as a powerful laboratory for investigating the relation between smell, temporality, embodiment, and meaning. As an introduction, the text provides the common framework within which the volume’s contributions can be read together. At the same time, it develops an original argument of its own by mapping the major social, historical, cognitive, semiotic, literary, and educational issues raised by olfactory experience. Its aim is not to unify these perspectives into a single theory, but to render visible the tensions, convergences