Go Brown: Inner-Disciplinary Conjectures

摘要

Although a rather untoward suggestion at first, in his Plague of Fantasies Slavoj Zizek invites us to consider the shape of our toilet bowls as a measure of our ideological edifice. Attempting to challenge those who warn of the lack of a discernible ideological position in contemporary societies, he points to objects of everyday utility and indicates how, beyond function, they are physical reflections of ideology: In a traditional German lavatory, the hole in which shit disappears after we flush water is way in front, so that the shit is first laid out for us to sniff at and inspect for traces of some illness; in the typical French lavatory, on the contrary, the hole is in the back - that is, the shit is supposed to disappear as soon as possible; finally the Anglo-Saxon... - the basin is full of water, so that the shit floats in it - visible, but not to be inspected.