Shitty stuff

Slavoj Zizek wrote in "Knee-Deep" (The London Review of Books, 2/9/04, reprinted in Australian Financial Review, 29/10/04):

"In a traditional German toilet, the hole into which shit disappears after we flush is right at the front, so that shit is first laid out for us to sniff and inspect for traces of illness. In the typical French toilet, on the contrary, the hole is at the back, ie shit is supposed to disappear as quickly as possible. Finaly, the American (Anglo-Saxon) toilet presents a synthesis, a mediation between these oposites: the toilet basin is full of water, so that the shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected."

Why is he writing such shitty stuff in an article reviewing Timothy Garton Ash's new book "Free World: Why a Crisis of the West Reveals the Opportunity of Our Time"? Well, he is trying to illustrate that each toilet design reflects "a certain ideological perception of how the subject should relate to excrement" in the "European Trinity" of Germany, France and the UK. Perhaps he believes that this observation is as insightful as Hegel on their existential attitudes: German reflective thoroughness, French revolutionary hastiness and English utilitarian pragmatism.

According to Zizek, "it is easy for an academic at a round table to claim that we live in a post-ideological universe, but the moment he visits the lavatory after the heated discussion, he is again knee-deep in ideology". Hence the title of the article!

Well, I have never been to Germany, and I regret not having paid much attention to toilet design when I visited France. I always have the impression that there are only two types of toilets in the world: The full-of-water type in the more developed world, and the "no-water-no-hole toilet" in the more underdeveloped, agrarian world. Naive me!