Let's talk about Shit

I was invited to give a talk to young students with an interest in academic education. There was an initiative to promote the progressive and constructive thought of academics to inspire high school students to follow academic life. The scope stated clearly that academics and scientists were free to speak openly about anything that displays the philosophical and methodical thought of academia. We were to reference our talk and provide material, which students can easily access, to read further on the subject we talked about. We were not obliged to talk about our research; we were encouraged to demonstrate how academic thought extended in everyday life. For a moment I felt they wanted us to talk about how a mathematician shops for groceries. The aim was to promote original thinking and inspire young pupils to become academic scholars. 

I thought “great!” I love to talk about whatever. I finished my drink and sent an application to the program organiser. A week later I had a slot at 8 in the afternoon and was requested for a title and a short, one hundred words or less, abstract. 

I titled the talk "Talking about Kitsch"

Wikipedia was the first reference: Kitsch (/ˈkɪtʃ/; loanword from German) is an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value.

Of course I had a different thing in mind, something Kundera mentioned in the Unbearable Lightness of Being about the original meaning of Kitsch. That was my second reference.

In reality I wanted to talk about excrement and its literary value. I wanted to talk about the many references in literature on humans emptying their bowels and how it 'levels' man down to earth. There is a liberating feeling when reading the philosophical musings of writers on crap. How writers love it when they characters are doing it because they have to, doing it uncontrollably, how they  being embarrassed, how it is hidden, how sometimes they choose not to see it is there and it is happening. Some writers love to talk about wiping that hole, using that peristaltic pump to relief yourself. They use it to show that shit makes us equal. Man becomes one with every living thing on the planet. There is always the same thing in the mind of a writer when shit enters text. A person is exposed by their needs. One cannot control them; they are there whether they chose to show them or prefer not to talk about them. When it comes to shit we are all hidden in a closet. We become Kitsch by not talking about it. 

How many of us say to colleagues at work. "I woke up this morning took a shit had a shower and my breakfast and came to work." We might just say I did my morning toilet thingy or whatever I went to the loo. Nobody talks about public toilets the way Bukwoski talked. The public toilet where hundreds, thousands of people empty their intestines. Nobody thinks of the large underwater canals expanding for many miles carrying our produce to water treatment plants. Many also ignore that the water we drink in our cities may have passed through 15 people at least before we drunk it and it carried our shit with it.

We say I have a gut feeling. I suffer from an acute case of an expanding gut. I am constipated. Nobody says. I am so afraid I feel a watery turd leaking to my underpants or I need to shit immediately or I haven't crapped for days, to strangers. We keep it for our closed ones. It is not an expression you would use in an interview. It is taboo, a Kitsch taboo.

Well think that Obama wipes his ass. Merkel too (I mean her ass and not Obama's). Those who control the world wipe their own assess. Now surely that makes them somehow similar to us and every animal who shits all over the place. You will not hear the President in a speech saying. "Well I was taking a shit today and I thought 'Good god we have to do something about education' (glunk!)"

Hollywood rarely shows protagonists taking a crap. They only show people who are about to die on the crapper. As if it is humiliating to die with your pants down, reading a poop book/magazine/newspaper. Some of our needs are glorified while others are a humiliating reminder of our fragile nature.

A sack of shit. A sack of intestines full of shit.

Shit, however in literature has great value. It shows how Kitsch we are. We would love to have some needs wiped out from our everyday life and by doing so we wish to destroy our true nature and replace it with an inferior, tasteless copy of man, or a worthless imitation of man that which gains popular value. We lose our substance, refraining to acknowledge that everybody shits.

I walked in the room with the presentation title projected on a screen above my head. The students were tired and yawning, some were texting on their cell phones, others chatted. I had to act quickly to win the audience, so I said. 

“There is small subtitle to my presentation. Tonight I would like to talk to you about Shit.”
There was laughter. Some had a disgusted look on them, I bet they thought I was going to show them slides of turds floating in the toilet.
“That’s right, Shit, the smelly thing we do.”
Nobody left though, and nobody spoke a word for half an hour or so. I must have won them over. They had questions too. I am pretty sure that they left imagining me wiping my ass. Now that is something to aspire to.


 (Christos Tsotsos is the author of "The secret of the elements")