That Javanese servants remembered tastes, smells, textures, and sounds so
differently from their Dutch employers is unsurprising. This domestic space
was, after all, "home" to the Dutch and "workplace" to their servants. Nor is it
surprising that recollections of these clashes of sensibility were affectively
charged. But the fact that affective memories are called up through the senses
is perhaps more widely accepted than the fact that moral and political judgments
are as well. Feelings of being imposed upon, of being bored, of being
judged and chided were not framed as personal testimonials of political injustice,
but were embedded in the sensory recall of the unremarkable, in the often
minute emotional accommodations of the everyday