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History of Shit (Documents Book) Paperback – Abridged, March 7, 2002

by Dominique Laporte (Author), Nadia Benabid (Translator), Rodolphe El-Khoury (Translator)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 21 ratings
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"A brilliant account of the politics of shit. It will leave you speechless."

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.

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Previous page
  1. Print length
    175 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    The MIT Press
  4. Publication date
    March 7, 2002
  5. Dimensions
    5.81 x 0.41 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0262621606
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0262621601
  8. See all details
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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

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The MIT Press; Abridged edition (March 7, 2002)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 175 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0262621606
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0262621601
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.81 x 0.41 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 21 ratings

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Dominique Laporte

Dominique Laporte

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
21 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Linda Hamilton
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2014
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great book for seeing the beginnings of the garbage / recycle big money businesses today.
2 people found this helpful
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debbie hise
5.0 out of 5 stars Good book
Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2000
this is a good book and i recommend it.
6 people found this helpful
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B. Nelson
4.0 out of 5 stars Quirky, Difficult, But Ultimately Rewarding Read to Filth
Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2021
Verified Purchase
As its title might suggest, this is definitely not for everyone. Laporte also delighted in defying convention and his book is as messy as his subject matter. He also peppers the text with obscure references - some more helpful and relevant than others. But Laporte writes with incredible wit, good humor, and a sharp eye for farce, irony and hypocrisy. In so doing, he manages to skewer more than a few sacred cows while sending up our changeable mores and subjective assertions of what has value and what does not. He brings the receipts too, with one eye-opening example after another throughout history in which the powerful and well-to-do often created their own reality and mythology of what was fashionable and what was disgusting. Laporte also rebels against the sanitization (and thus impoverishment) of the French language that was deemed wasteful and extravagant by overbearing officials. His arguments here are a bit more muddled, but they serve as a good metaphorical parallel to the effort to sanitize and privatize (and profit from) our waste. Some sections made me laugh out loud, some were absolutely shocking, and some were nearly impenetrable. It wasn't always easy sledding, but I thought the ride was well worth it in the end.
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Amazon Customer
1.0 out of 5 stars Tries to shock rather than inform
Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2004
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.
24 people found this helpful
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Boobasket
1.0 out of 5 stars good heavens!
Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2002
Good heavens! What an awful title for a book. Hearing it for the first time, I dropped my monacle. Hearing the title for the second time made me do it again. I really should stop being so horrified.
21 people found this helpful
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Kindle Customer
1.0 out of 5 stars What a hoorible title!
Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2005
I was walking my poodle in the park ythe other day when I saw several kids crowded around this book reading it aloud. I guess they learned a new word!Do we want children today to be reafding about s*** and the history of it? In my opinion, this book is plainly A$$anine book. Don't read s*** like this, read Redwall.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Faith Oxford
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 29, 2015
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All fine
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Mustafa Vedat Ozan
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 16, 2015
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thx
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