Spectacles of Waste

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Today, our fascination with excrement shapes our understanding of modern identity. Concerns about fecal matters challenge our self-perception, prompting us to question the possibility of being truly uncontaminated. Our attempts to reject our bodily waste have given rise to fields like wastewater epidemiology and studies of the gut microbiome, as well as influencing psychoanalysis, philosophy, social theory, literature, and contemporary art. This raises important questions: why do we adhere to these scato-logics, and why the compulsion to deny these uncomfortable truths? In this exploration, a leading historian of medicine examines how human waste provokes and interrogates modern reason, bioscience, and aesthetics. The journey delves into sewage analysis, the gut microbiome, excremental colonialism, and the politics of self-colonization. A rich tapestry of modern excrementality unfolds, featuring a diverse range of topics such as anal pleasures, peculiar stools, intestinal intoxication, and the emergence of modern life sciences. Anderson's engaging analysis highlights how, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, we have intensified our efforts to abstract and datafy our waste, revealing our unconscious complicity in the biopolitical implications of our relationship with excrement.