To this futile end — the fantasy of wastelessness in which “the hygienist is a hero”—excrement was taxed, by emperors Vespasian and Constantine; urine was drunk; and feces were turned into medicine and cosmetics. What streamed out of us could make money or make us healthy and beautiful. (The truism “Waste not want not” finds its supreme explicator in Laporte.) In a wackily convincing way, History of Shit traces society’s efforts to legislate and handle human waste, to reduce the shame produced by what leaks from our orifices, even to transform shit into gold. “The place where one ‘does one’s business’ is also the place where waste accumulates. To each his shit! proclaims a new ethic of the ego decreed by a State that entitles each subject to sit on his own ass on his own heap of gold.”
Laporte, a French psychoanalyst, died in 1984 at the age of thirty-five. Along with Barthes, not surprisingly, his guiding lights were Freud and Lacan. The former “defined order, cleanliness, and beauty. as the cornerstones of civilization,” while the latter stated: “Civilization is the spoils: the cloaca maxima.” For these two theorists, the terror of our own mucky, dark holes, the abject fear of never climbing out of the primeval sewer, propelled the march to civilization — the costuming of human animality.
As a character from the anarchic ’60s should, Laporte maintains an ironic posture toward the civilizing drive. “The privatization of waste,” he proclaims in his inimitable fashion, “a process whose universality is not a historical given, made it possible for the smell of shit to be bearable within the family setting, home to the closest social ties.” In other words, the family, the basis of society, established an enduring bond only after first being able to stand each other’s shit — something R.D. Laing failed to mention in his critique of that neurotic social unit.
Reading History of Shit is both pleasurable and disgusting — and it is also about that ambivalent duo, pleasure and disgust. Laporte, who studied the hidden mission of style, also had style in abundance — a definite way with words — and his tongue is often in his cheek. My recourse to that flaccid metaphor drolly underscores his idea that language and the body are bound together — often gagged — in secret, inviolable secretions or nuggets. See, it’s nearly impossible to discuss History of Shit without sliding into bathroom humor, which is by definition immature. A baby’s interest in its shit precedes its ability to speak. So if eschatology is the study of last things, scatology should be the study of first things, since shit precedes language and death. In any case, History of Shit could transform all language scholars into Howard Stern. It certainly confirms this reader’s sense that it would be less embarrassing to admit to having murdered someone than to having farted in a “good” restaurant.
Twee Kamers
It’s very difficult to find apartments in Amsterdam, an old and small city. Sidonie and her friend were trying to find a place to live and they placed an ad in the newspaper, giving my place of work to call. They asked if I would mind taking calls for them. I said I wouldn’t.
My Dutch was hardly adequate; it enabled me to buy food and panic when times called for it. They had advertised for two rooms. I knew two rooms to be twee kamers.
I was alone in the office when the telephone rang. A Dutch male voice asked, “Advertitie voor twee kamers?” Ya, I replied, not me (or may, as it would be pronounced in Dutch), my friends, twee persons voor twee kamers. I felt quite proud of myself, two people for two rooms. Aah, he said, twee persons. Ya, I said, do you have them? Twee kamers, he said. Ya, ya, I said. Slowly, and partially in English, he said, “I am holding my pemel.” Oh, ya, I said, thinking he might mean he was holding a pencil, not knowing the world for pencil in Dutch, though curious as to why he would tell me that at all. “Momentje,” he called out. I imagined he was writing something down and waited. “Ik kom,” he cried. I hung up.
Y is for Yearning
For Sensitive People
It’s Independence Day, the Fourth of July, and America is 236 years old. I’ve been pondering the tortuous coupling, “art and politics.” Each partner resists easy definition, especially “art” (“Is it art?” and “What is art?” are jokes); I can’t imagine Ludwig Wittgenstein countenancing their murky conjunction. It’s hard to avoid the couple’s traps.
Art is not usually measured by its utility (the school of “relational aesthetics” attempts to call that hand), while politics is. What usefulness is believed to be is also a matter of contestation. In 1972, in Amsterdam, with artist Jos Schoffelen, I ran a cinema with an eclectic program, the first in the Netherlands to feature double-headers and to screen an Andy Warhol movie, Bike Boy (1967). A rogue film collector approached us with a 16mm print of Tarzan Escapes (1936). He screened it for us: Its white supremacy and brutal racism were shockingly casual. Black African men fell off steep cliffs, while their white British masters exclaimed about the loss of precious equipment.
Jos and I wanted to pair it with a documentary about the Black Panthers. Amsterdam’s Communist Film Club distributed it, but wouldn’t rent it unless we organized a protest march. “Why do we have to organize a march?” “Because it’s a political film,” they said. I said, “If people want to march afterward, they can.” Juxtaposing the two was art and politics; “Art could be a dialogue,” we said, “which is political activity.” “No way,” they said.
The cinema wasn’t considered “serious” because of its emphasis on art; soon their club vetoed the cinema getting funding from Amsterdam City Council. Maybe this is too strident or absurd an example of conflict between, and in, art and politics. Generally, I proffer the idea that all art is political, though I’m not satisfied by it. It seems subtle, yet too broad, and because of this not convincing. But I may be trapped in it, not having a better argument.
Writing novels and stories, I’ve become convinced that narratives concern themselves with justice or adjudication. Writing fiction, I might be able to avoid mental traps, habits of mind. I try to be vigilant about how I write — style, form — to trample complacency of all types; in concert with a writer’s lacks, it generates truisms and stereotypical characters.
I often recall other artists’ choices. Ad Reinhardt drew political cartoons and made non-referential paintings. The American poet George Oppen stopped writing poetry for 30 years, after he became a member of the Communist Party in the 1930s, because he wouldn’t write Party poems. When he started again, he produced an exceptional poetics.
In a performance I once saw, the artist Bob Flanagan hammered a nail into his penis. I put my head in my hands, covering my eyes (one man fainted); but I wouldn’t think of stopping him. It was his penis. Was this a political act? Flanagan was born with cystic fibrosis and was told he’d die at 20. He’d been a cystic fibrosis poster boy at 13. His art fought his genetic identity, and what the disease didn’t cruelly claim, he tormented. For his exhibition “Visiting Hours” at the New Museum, New York, in 1994, Flanagan built a hospital room and lay on a hospital bed, attached to an oxygen tank.