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The excrementitious subject

Examining the unspeakable
by
December 2024, no. 471

Spectacles of Waste by Warwick Anderson

Polity, £14.99 pb, 184 pp

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ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

The excrementitious subject

Examining the unspeakable
by
December 2024, no. 471

In a survey on humanity’s most vital inventions, the British public ranked the flush toilet above mobile phones, beds, shoes, and the combustion engine. Who can blame them? In a well-sewered world, we are protected from many of the infectious diseases that contributed to making our unplumbed ancestors’ lives nasty, brutish, and short. Cholera, hepatitis, polio, and the diarrhoeal diseases that continue to kill more people globally than acts of violence all implicate faecal transmission. It seems only rational to dispatch our excrement as quickly as possible in a cleansing torrent of water.

Spectacles of Waste

Spectacles of Waste

by Warwick Anderson

Polity, £14.99 pb, 184 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

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