History of Shit (Documents Book) [Paperback]

Dominique Laporte (Author), Nadia Benabid (Translator), Rodolphe el-Khoury (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Documents Book | Publication Date: March 7, 2002

Written in Paris after the heady days of student revolt in May 1968 and before the devastation of the AIDS epidemic, History of Shit is emblematic of a wild and adventurous strain of 1970s' theoretical writing that attempted to marry theory, politics, sexuality, pleasure, experimentation, and humor. Radically redefining dialectical thought and post-Marxist politics, it takes an important--and irreverent--position alongside the works of such postmodern thinkers as Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, and Lyotard.Laporte's eccentric style and ironic sensibility combine in an inquiry that is provocative, humorous, and intellectually exhilarating. Debunking all humanist mythology about the grandeur of civilization, History of Shit suggests instead that the management of human waste is crucial to our identities as modern individuals--including the organization of the city, the rise of the nation-state, the development of capitalism, and the mandate for clean and proper language. Far from rising above the muck, Laporte argues, we are thoroughly mired in it, particularly when we appear our most clean and hygienic.Laporte's style of writing is itself an attack on our desire for "clean language." Littered with lengthy quotations and obscure allusions, and adamantly refusing to follow a linear argument, History of Shit breaks the rules and challenges the conventions of "proper" academic discourse.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dominique Laporte, who died in 1984 at the age of thirty-five, was a psychoanalyst and the coauthor of Français national: Politique et practiques de la langue nationale sous la Révolution Française.

Product Details

• Paperback: 175 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (March 7, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262621606
• ISBN-13: 978-0262621601
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.7 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #319,500 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars NOT about scatological humor, December 3, 2003

By 

Saul Boulschett "Anyway" (Dry land) - See all my reviews

This review is from: History of Shit (Documents Book) (Paperback)

Although it is hilarious in parts, it is actually a pretty sober piece of scholarship, albeit written in the dank hull of that "ship" rather than on the impeccably clean and respectable captain's deck, as it were. The spirit with which this book is written, makes it a sort of lesser cousin to Louis Aragon's Treatise on Style.

The content basically traces the (political and economic) history of the problem of getting rid of human excrement and other bodily productions, including, ultimately, foul language and obnoxious thought -- as defined by the State and Royal Science. Arguing for the paralell between the history of subjectivity and the history of 'merde' in all its multifarious forms, Laporte centers his thesis on the (Freudian) idea that the rise of the subject and subjectivity is intimately tied to the decline of the olfactory sense (the public organ par excellence) and its replacement by the optical (the organ of privation). Laporte explores the subsequent tensions that came to define modernity's agenda in the space between the private nose and the public eye.

Discussed here, in a style of writing that is so erratic and meandering (at high speeds) that it comes close to derailing altogether, are Egyptian rites and Roman laws, furniture design, urban planning, and medieval edicts concerning burials (so as to minimize the spread of "morbidific rays" emitted by the decomposing dead).
Body, bed, building, tomb, and tomes are all examined in their association with the ever-present tyranny/blessing of the cloacal, the miasmic and the mephitic. The problem of properly disposing human 'merde' has consequences far beyond the water closet and beyond the little container (the cranium) that contains that most most fertile producer of foul ideas -- the brain. An excellent peek by way of Poopology to another take on the History of Control.

Warning: As the content of this book is not bathroom humor, the illiterate or the poorly educated cannot reasonably expect to get any pleasure out of this small but pungent book. Avoid this unless you are familiar with European intellectual history.

16 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Tries to shock rather than inform, July 23, 2004

By 

Erika Mitchell (E. Calais, VT USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: History of Shit (Documents Book) (Paperback)

This book is an academic romp through taboos, especially those that can in some way be related to excretion. Laporte begins by reviewing a 1539 French royal edict that railed against the use of Latin in official documents. He then juxtaposes this with a second edict of the same year that expressed disgust at the unhygienic conditions of the Paris streets and responded by demanding that residents clean up their practices and house owners build cesspools. He gropes to find a connection between the two edicts, and proceeds in a similar fashion throughout the book, striving to connect theories of philosophy, economics, and linguistics with a few episodes in the history of public hygiene in France. Throughout the book, Laporte takes great enjoyment from wallowing in academic obfustication of his material. In the introduction, the translators note that they strived hard to faithfully convey the impenetrability of the text. They greatly succeeded. With words such as physiocrats, antiphrasis, and mephitic, you'll need a dictionary to get through this one.

The book is illustrated with black and white photographs and drawings that appear at the end of each chapter. To see where the illustrations fit, you must pay close attention to the margins of the text, where the figures are cited by number. The connection between the illustrations and the topic of the corresponding part of the text is, in many case, not very clear. Sources are cited using endnotes appearing at the end of the book. There is no index.

A few ideas presented in the book got me thinking a little, such as, the quotation from a letter by Paul Leroux, "By nature's law every man is at once a producer and consumer, and if he consumes, he produces." Most of the others left me scratching my head, such as "Language comes into its own only through an act of castration that marks it as feminine." Readers with a thorough classical background in philosophy, semantics, and economic theory who find humor in the scatological may enjoy this book immensely. But if you're actually looking for some historical material about sanitation and public hygiene, you would be better to look elsewhere.

18 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightful seriocomic glimpse into a misunderstood world, February 11, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: History of Shit (Hardcover)

Once I got past the unusual odor upon opening this book I couldn't put it down. The kind of book you want to put into the lavoratory for your guests to read when using the facilities The preforated tear out pages remind the old timers what Montgomery Ward and Sears catalogs were once used for.