Full Description
Contemporary American Literature and Excremental Culture: American Sh*t analyzes post-1960 scatological novels that utilize representations of human waste to address pressing issues, including pollution of waterways, environmental racism, and militarism. Primarily examining postmodern parody, the book shows the value of aesthetic renderings of sanitary engineering for composting ideologies that fuel a ruinous impact on the world. Drawing on late twentieth-century psychoanalytic thinkers Norman O. Brown, Frantz Fanon, and Leo Bersani, American Sh*t shows the continued relevance of psychoanalytic interpretations of contemporary fiction for understanding post-45 authors' engagement with waste. Ultimately, the monograph reveals how novelists Ishmael Reed, Jonathan Franzen, Gloria Naylor, Don DeLillo, and Samuel R. Delany critique subjects who abnegate their status as waste-producing beings and bring readers back to embrace
Winner of the 2019 Northeast Modern Language Association Book Award for Literary Criticism of English Language Literature
Contents
1. On the American Standard: Post-1960 Scatological Fiction.- 2. Soiling the Black Body: Ishmael Reed Engages White Shit.- 3. Battling the Excremental Self: Civilization and Its Decomposition in Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections.- 4. Fleeing the Excremental Stain through Acquisition: Getting to the Bottom of Black Suburban Splendor in Gloria Naylor's Linden Hills.- 5. Waste as Weapon: Fecal Bombing in Don DeLillo's Underworld. - 6. Shit and Other Forms of Dynamite Refuse: Samuel R. Delany's Provocative Excremental Eros.- 7. Decay as Gift: Composting American Shit.
