Smells, Bells and Touch: Iconoclasm in P aris during the F rench R evolution

This article examines the ways in which P arisians mobilised sight, smell, touch and sound to alter their city's ‘signscape’ and mediate power relations during the ancien régime and F rench R evolution. It uses contemporary sources to explore disputes about the treatment of statues of kings, busts of J ean‐ P aul M arat, and church bells. Given that impingements on visual signifiers' physical integrity often generated multi‐sensory connotations that were readily understood by contemporaries, it is argued that the historiography of revolutionary iconoclasm has been too oculcentric. The paper ends by concluding that iconoclasm might be productively re‐conceived as a form of sign transformation.