What do your everyday behaviors around shit reveal about our culture, history, or power relations, broadly defined? You can use the main themes of the readings as a starting point if you wish, such as Gerling’s connections with indoor plumbing and colonialism and racial hierarchies, or Simmons’ resurfacing of utopian socialist thought from 19th century French theorists who saw shit as a resource, but feel free to excrete other shitty connections if you feel so moved.
In my few experiences with shit, two themes stand prominent for me: it is unsanitary and it is taboo. The unsanitary part makes sense to me. Just like any other bodily fluids, feces can carry disease and plague, because it is literally our bodies excreting the resources we don’t need and/or want. History is nothing short of examples of collapse due to mishandling of bodily produced waste (see Medieval Europe). The ladder theme, though, is very strange to me. I’m sure most are familiar with the children’s book Everyone Poops. As the Wikipedia page describes, “The book tells children that all animals defecate and that they have always done so. The book is intended to relieve shame and embarrassment around the act of defecating by explaining to children that it is a natural part of life.” Great! Except, why is there shame and embarrassment surrounding the act of defecating if it is a natural part of life? Where are these children getting the idea that poo is taboo? I believe the answer lies in a cultural understanding of privacy. In our historically unsanitary shit practices, relieving oneself was not done behind a closed door where no one else could see you, it was generally done as bathing was – in the group bathhouse, where everyone else in the family was also doing it. At some point in our refining of these practices to make them more sanitary, it became a more “private” event, potentially in an effort to dissuade the cross-contamination from the diseases that lurk within feces. Additionally, we have societally decided that the parts which produce these acts should be covered up at all times publicly. This is partially due to the sexual nature of the nether regions, but it also reinforces the idea that what goes on down there is taboo.