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CHAPTER 1
The filth in the way
Riddle: What is it that the rich man puts in his pocket that the poor man throws away?
Answer: Snot.
Whilst children usually find this extremely amusing, the normal adult reaction is to regard it as unfunny, childish, disreputable, rather revolting and altogether unworthy of serious attention. Rubbish theory stands this response on its head, regarding this joke as particularly worthy of attention precisely because the normal adult response in Western culture is to disregard it. Thus right from the word go rubbish theory is faced with the near-impossibility of taking a detached, objective, scientific approach to its subject matter. The serious adult is a serious adult because he avoids childish rubbish and so a serious adult approach to childish rubbish is a contradiction, requiring a stance as schizophrenic as that of a communist stockbroker (or, perhaps, a Young Conservative or an art-educationist).
This childish riddle provides a convenient, if vulgar, outline of my main area of concern. First of all it sets out a relationship between status, the possession of objects, and the ability to discard objects. The impeccable and quite un-entertaining paradigm which is set up in the riddle may be stated thus: there is a status difference between the condition of being rich and the condition of being poor, the former being higher than the latter. The condition of richness or poorness is determined by the quantity of objects one possesses: a poor person possesses few objects, a rich person many objects. But how can one tell whether a person is rich or poor? Apart from tramps, most people choose not to carry all their possessions around with them and really rich people would be physically incapable of doing so even if they wanted to and even assuming they could overcome the problems of security and insurance that such ostentatious behaviour would entail. Well, the answer is that one cannot always be sure of recognizing a rich or poor person, but one sure indication of status which one may sometimes be fortunate enough to witness is how many objects people are able to discard. A poor man, since he has few possessions, can afford to discard very little; a rich man will be able to discard much more.
This paradigm is evidently correct since, at least in Western culture, people recognize this riddle as a riddle. That is, it claims that there is a situation which, on the face of it, would seem to deny the whole basis of our social order: namely that a person who is poor discards more than a person who is rich. We are puzzled by the riddle, rack our brains for an answer, cannot find one, and when we hear the answer 'snot' feel cheated since we assumed that the object discarded was valuable. Obviously a poor man who discards more valueless objects than a rich man, in no way threatens the social order. For the social order to be maintained there has to be some measure of agreement as to what is of value. People in different cultures may value different things, and they may value the same things differently, but all cultures insist upon some distinction between the valued and the valueless.
The riddle succeeds by playing upon that which is residual to our system of cultural categories. When, in the context of wealth and poverty, we talk of possessable objects we unquestioningly assume that we are talking about valuable objects. The category 'objects of no-value' is invisible and we only notice its existence when it is pointed out to us by the riddle. But the riddle contains much more than this. If the answer is simply 'an object of no-value' (say, pebbles or sweet papers) it is not very funny. What makes it funny is that the answer 'snot' is an object, as it were, of negative value; something that should be thrown away. Thus we can identify three categories of possessable object: valuable, valueless, and negatively valued. The rich man and the poor man according to the cultural paradigm should both discard their snot, yet the rich man does not, and in pointing this out the riddle is genuinely subversive and does threaten the social order. Hence the serious adult response which seeks to suppress this subversion by refusing to see it: a conspiracy of blindness.
Rather than join this conspiracy of blindness, let us poke our noses right into the rich man's snotty handkerchief. When one thinks of it, it really is quite extraordinary that a fastidious person, who regularly changes his socks and underwear, has a bath each day, keeps his hair neatly trimmed and brushed, cleans his fingernails, and stems any undesirable body smells by using a deodorant, should quite happily discharge a stream of opaque mucous fluid, liberally studded with darker more solid fragments, not to mention the millions of germs and bacteria which although invisible he knows to be present, into a porous handkerchief and then place the whole soggy parcel, none too carefully folded, in his trouser pocket on top of his small change and cigarette lighter which he will later use to pay for his gin-and-tonics and to light his and his companion's cigarettes. Yet this is exactly what he does, though one can only assume, in view of his otherwise extremely hygiene-conscious behaviour, that this is not how he sees his actions. One can only assume that in discharging his snot into his handkerchief and then folding it, he has in some way transferred that same snot from the category of negatively-valued object to the category of valueless object. That is, whilst he evidently feels he must get rid of it from his nose, he does not feel any such compulsion to get rid of it from his pocket. Nor, on the other hand, does he go home and put the handkerchief in his desk, or place it in the safe deposit at his bank: once in his handkerchief it is evidently neither positively nor negatively valued.
In contrast, the rude peasant cheerfully discharging his snot on to the ground, first through one nostril and then through the other (sometimes called a 'docker's hankie'), has no need of these conceptual acrobatics. Such category manipulations are hard to spot in our own culture, obscured as they are by the residues from our cultural categories and our conspiracies of blindness, but they often appear more prominent, and occasionally much more spectacular, when we look at other cultures. Consider this Trinidad Indian's view of his previously unvisited Motherland:
Indians defecate everywhere. They defecate, mostly, beside the railway tracks. But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills; they defecate on the river banks; they defecate on the streets; they never look for cover.
Indians defecate everywhere, on floors, in urinals for men (as a result of yogic contortions that can only be conjectured). Fearing contamination they squat rather than sit, and every lavatory cubicle carries marks of their misses. No one notices.
These squatting figures — to the visitor, after a time, as eternal and emblematic as Rodin's Thinker — are never spoken of; they are never written about; they are not mentioned in novels or stories; they do not appear in feature films or documentaries. This might be regarded as part of a permissible prettyfying intention. But the truth is that Indians do not see these squatters and might even, with complete sincerity, deny that they exist. A collective blindness arising out of the Indian fear of pollution and the resulting conviction that Indians are the cleanest people in the world. They are required by their religion to take a bath every day. This is crucial and they have devised minute rules to protect themselves from every conceivable contamination. There is only one pure way to defecate; in lovemaking only the left hand is to be used; food is to be taken only with the right. It has all been regulated and purified. To observe the squatters is therefore distorting; it is to fail to see through to the truth.
Yet, total though it might appear, this conspiracy of blindness is not extended to the non-Indian. I was told by one of the most eminent Indians of Nehru's generation that there were no flies in the Kulu Valley in the Indian Himalayas until the Tibetan refugees came there. As it happens, I had been there thirteen years previously, just before the Tibetan refugees arrived, and can vouch that, so far as one can estimate these things, the fly population had remained unchanged throughout the period. Yet I was told that the Tibetans had brought them, that 'the whole forest is their latrine'. Only the Tibetan excrement was visible to the Indian. Only the outside observer can see that all India is the Indians' latrine. It is all too easy as an outsider to spot the Indians' conspiracy of blindness. To see one's own is altogether a more difficult and uncomfortable feat. The particular version of this feat that I wish to perform is to make visible the conspiracy of blindness that is imposed by the social sciences.
Now sociology, our formalized area of enquiry concerned with the understanding and explanation both of our own society and of societies in general, is very much a serious and adult occupation and, consequently, very much predisposed to such conspiracies of blindness. The questions I will ask are: first, is this in fact the case? And second, if it is, does it matter? I will argue that the answer to each of those questions is yes: that serious adult thought in general, and sociology in particular, constitute a form of discourse that, of its very nature, is unable to make contact with certain regions of social life and, more important, that what goes on in those regions is crucial for any understanding of society.
This inevitable circumspection that so distressingly distances the social scientist from the object of his study places him within the first of the Three Species of Mortal Men identified by the founder of Rubbish Theory: Jonathan Swift. According to Swift, a member of this Species proceeds 'with the Caution of a Man that walks thro' Edenborough Streets in a Morning, who is indeed as careful as he can, to watch diligently, and spy out the Filth in his Way, not that he is curious to observe the Colour and Complexion of the Ordure, or take its Dimensions, much less to be padling in, or tasting it: but only with a Design to come out as cleanly as he may.'
If this were the end of the matter then rubbish theory would seem to be doomed from the start. For the social scientist who wishes to study rubbish must, at the very least, 'padle' in it. Yet if he does this what chance is there that he will 'come out as cleanly' as his fellows? How can he remain a member of the social scientific community if, in order to study rubbish, he has to abandon the form of discourse which is the defining criterion of that community? How can he wallow in the ordure in Edenborough streets throughout the morning and contribute to post-graduate seminars at Edinburgh University in the afternoon? Yet this seemingly impossible and revolting course of action is the defining characteristic of one type of social scientist: the anthropologist. It is called Participant Observation.
The simple fact is that most (I will not presume to speak for all) social scientists do not remain trapped for life inside their defining form of discourse — they can shout abuse at the referee, camp it up at the gay disco, or terrorize their children, as well as the next man or woman. It is just that when they are being social scientists these other forms of discourse are excluded. The student of rubbish cannot do this. The fundamental irreconcilability of a serious adult approach and rubbish subject-matter means that the rubbish theorist has to deal in different forms of discourse simultaneously. And since they cannot be mixed they must be juxtaposed. The joke, the paradox, the shock technique and the journalistic style, far from being unscholarly devices to be avoided at all costs, become rubbish theory's inseparable accompaniments.
Of course, the anthropologist doing his fieldwork on Skid Row remains different from those he studies, for he has access to his university seminars whilst they do not. It is a nice irony that those who do the best fieldwork and actually merge with their subjects must at the same time sever totally their links with their discipline. In consequence, theory can only be built up from the second-rate — from sadly incomplete insights into other realities — and this gives rise to a formidable problem, which is: how do we make allowance for this incompleteness? Do we adopt a crude positivism and assume that what we have gained access to is all that there is — that, if we can't get at it, it doesn't exist? Or do we accept that our insights are incomplete, that we have no way of knowing how incomplete they are, and that, in consequence, we might as well abandon the whole enterprise? Though these pessimistic polar alternatives can each exert a powerful attraction, there does exist another course which lies not so much between, as in calculated opposition to, these twin counsels of despair. It seems to me that the real significance of the form of discourse associated with serious thought is that, suitably developed, it holds out the possibility of recognizing the existence of, and of making some allowances for, this incompleteness. In other words, what I propose to do is, by juxtaposing immiscible forms of discourse, to take a very serious adult approach to our disgracefully childish riddle.
An advertisement in The Times promoting The Times' classified advertisement columns, and the service provided by The Times staff who advise on the best wordings for the classified ads, shows a pair of identical vases of oriental style. One is labelled, in crude block capitals, 'Secondhand'; the other, in elegant copperplate within a black border, 'Antique'. The inscription above the vases reads: 'It's not what you say, it's the way that you say it.'
Our appreciation of the advertisement is adequate proof that objects may be seen in two very different ways, one aesthetically and economically superior to the other, and moreover that in certain circumstances we may be able, to our considerable advantage, to control the way in which we ourselves and others see an object. The pair of vases has been chosen to illustrate this flexibility. The label 'Secondhand' leads us to see the vase on the left as a worthless piece of tat; a grotesque present from a grotesque relative. The label 'Antique' leads us to see its mate as the real thing; a beautiful, delicate, valuable, old, Chinese ceramic objet d'art.
This flexibility does not extend to all objects. Most objects are only visible in one or other of these two ways, and their identities are so certain that the labels 'Secondhand' and 'Antique' are superfluous. The used car in the back street car mart and the Queen Anne walnut tallboy advertised in Country Life are perhaps more typical, in their unequivocal natures, of objects in general, than The Times' borderline vases.
Let us start by identifying two very different ways in which objects can be seen. They form an element in our perception of the physical and social environment, our world view. The element can be described like this. In our culture objects are assigned to one or other of two overt categories which I label 'transient' and 'durable'. Objects in the transient category decrease in value over time and have finite life-spans. Objects in the durable category increase in value over time and have (ideally) infinite life-spans. The Queen Anne tallboy, for example, falls into the durable category, the used car into the transient category.
The way we act towards an object relates directly to its category membership. For instance, we treasure, display, insure, and perhaps even mortgage the antique vase, but we detest and probably destroy its secondhand mate. Obviously, when it comes to objects, there is a relationship between our view of the world and our action in that world, but what is the nature of this relationship? Does the category membership of an object determine the way we act towards it, or does the way we act towards an object determine its category membership? So far as the unequivocal Queen Anne tallboy and the used car are concerned simple observation of the market in these objects reveals that their category membership determines the way we act towards them: that is, world view is prior to action. They are located within a region of fixed assumptions. But when we look at the two vases we find that the way we act towards them, that is whether we treat them as antique or secondhand, determines their category membership: that is, action is prior to world view. They lie in a region of flexibility somewhere between the inflexible regions inhabited by Queen Anne tallboys and used cars (see Fig. 1 on page 26).
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Rubbish Theory"
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Copyright © 2017 Michael Thompson.
Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
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