The Unidirectionality of Olfactory Intentionality and the Backlash of the Subject: A Phenomenological Reading of Süskind’s Perfume

Journal of Publishing and Criticism

JPC, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2026, pp.35-44

Print ISSN: 3107-0892; Online ISSN: 3107-0906

Journal homepage: https://www.jpcjournal.com

DOI: https://doi.org/10.64058/jpc260104uoibs

嗅觉意向性的单向化与主体的反噬——聚斯金德《香水》的现象学解读

李冰怡（LEE Bingyi），张佳棻（Chia-fen Chang）

摘要：帕特里克·聚斯金德的小说《香水》通过主人公格雷诺耶对气味的极端追求，构建了一个以嗅觉为核心的经验世界。借助现象学的意向性理论为核心框架，结合胡塞尔的“生活世界”、梅洛-庞蒂的“身体主体”等概念，分析嗅觉如何成为格雷诺耶确证自我存在的唯一媒介，并剖析这一确证方式为何最终走向失败。研究发现，格雷诺耶“无体味”的设定使其嗅觉意向性陷入“单向化”困境。他能通过嗅觉意向世界，却无法成为他人意向活动的对象。这一困境驱动他历经气味狩猎、暴力占有、提纯萃取与集体操控四个阶段，试图以技术手段填补存在缺失，却始终无法在知觉场中获得真正的相互确证。其悲剧结局揭示了意向性在丧失主体间可逆性时由建构意义异化为消解意义的逻辑。相较于叙事学与符号学，现象学的优势在于深入意识的内在结构，揭示感官经验的哲学维度，为文学研究提供了从“经验描述”到“存在追问”的批判路径。

关键词：现象学；《香水》；嗅觉意向性；存在论危机

作者简介：李冰怡，比较文学与世界文学2024级硕士研究生，福建师范大学文学院，研究方向为英美文学，电邮：747874892@qq.com。张佳棻（通讯作者），福建师范大学文学院副教授，主要研究方向为欧美戏剧与表演研究，电邮：satiminn@fjnu.edu.cn。

Title：The Unidirectionality of Olfactory Intentionality and the Backlash of the Subject: A Phenomenological Reading of Süskind’s Perfume

Abstract: Patrick Süskind’s novel Perfume constructs an experience-world centered on olfaction through the protagonist Grenouille’s extreme pursuit of scent. Taking the phenomenological theory of intentionality as its core framework and incorporating concepts such as Husserl’s “lifeworld” and Merleau-Ponty’s “body-subject,” this paper analyzes how olfaction becomes the sole medium through which Grenouille affirms his own existence, and examines why this mode of self-affirmation ultimately fails. The study finds that Grenouille’s inherent scentlessness traps his olfactory intentionality in a predicament of unidirectionality: he is able to intend the world through smell, yet cannot become an object of the intentional acts of others. This predicament drives him through four stages—scent-hunting, violent appropriation, distillation and extraction, and collective manipulation—as he attempts to remedy his existential lack through technical means, but he never attains genuine mutual confirmation within the perceptual field. His tragic end reveals a logic by which intentionality, when deprived of intersubjective reversibility, is alienated from a meaning-constituting force into a meaning-dissolving one. Compared with narratology and semiotics, the strength of phenomenology lies in its capacity to penetrate the inner structures of consciousness and to disclose the philosophical dimensions of sensory experience, thereby offering literary studies a critical path from “descriptive experience” to “existential inquiry.”

Keywords: phenomenology; Perfume; olfactory intentionality; ontological crisis

Author Biographies: LEE Bingyi, A 2024 master’s candidate in Comparative Literature and World Literature, Fujian Normal University, specializing in British and American literature, E-mail: 747874892@qq.com. Chia-fen Chang (Corresponding Author), obtained her PhD in Performance Studies from New York University. She is Associate Professor in the School of Chinese Language and Literature at Fujian Normal University. Her research interests include performance theory and intercultural theatre, E-mail: satiminn@fjnu.edu.cn.