Interesting

Thanks, Colleague Adams. If you have more thoughts later, I would be happy to hear them.

Very interesting, Some years ago I have been interested in the history of dance and dancing in Europe, and got some practice resp. knowledge. But it is here only emblematically meant, I assume.

Just I have remembered that also the opposite tendency is provable in some historical aspects of culture: that parts of the normally unseen and worthless culture of the poor people is discovered as valuable for the higher classes. You can see this in the 17th century that the Scotish jig (in French: Gigue) get high esteem: But the early forms of jig in England were considered vulgar. In Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado About Nothing there is the quote: "Wooing is hot and hasty like a Scottish jigg."

Many dances of the lower classes and "folk" get entrance in circles of the higher classes, also the Nobles. With Louis IVX. in France, a passionate dancer, came many English dances to France at the court of the king.

A second kind of appreciation of the "dances of the folk" happened by musicians and composer: The (French) dance suite (in orchester-, resp. chamber music) of 17th century normally is finished with a Gigue.

But if you analyze some rapper texts today, how "dirty" they are, taking in account that they have become also a part of "higher culture" in our days, getting prizes , then it is also seen the movement from the old poor to the young and wealthy classes.

Hello, Colleague Retter,

The upper classes may take up folk dance but few of them (exception Jane Addams of Hull-House settlement and Nobel Peace prize winner) will voluntarily go to live with the poor and study their conditions of existence.

I think the difference is somewhat pronounced. We are talking about real trash, not metaphorical trash, although terms about "trashy" people and their "Rust Belt" towns can almost seem as if reality to those being so designated.

Vielen Dank für Ihre Kommentare. Ich wollte nur klarstellen, was es bedeutet, in der Nähe von echtem Müll zu sein und einen schmutzigen Arbeitsplatz in der Gesellschaft zu haben.

One other thought is that "trash" is a resource that can be used. Is the distance from trash that the upper-class people insist upon not helping us to find more resources in the vast global resource called "trash"?

In terms of global cultural norms, correct me on this, no culture has its better off members living closer to (real physical) trash, air-borne pollutants, and so on than the same group's poorer members.

In England, the jig has never assumed respectability, Hein. Still considered a silly, archaic activity of fools and peasants-if noted at all.

But Gloria, you've reminded me of the party scene in FitzGerald's The Great Gatsby, where accumulated rubbish-if I remember correctly-is cleared out of sight.

Not my area

Okay, sorry, Colleague Harry.

Colleague Stanley, yes, I will go back and look at that scene. Of course, trash is cleared in lots of dramas and novels, but it may be significant here because of old Mr. Gatz and Valley of the Ashes.

Dear Gloria, very, very, very interesting question!

Here are some ideas that pop into my mind:

- The critic of Aristotle on Plato (Metaphysics):

There are no ideas for “dirt” or “mud”

(dirt lacks form or substance)

- There is no aesthetic of dirt - (= existential borderline aesthetics),

Although a lot of artist used dirt in a work of art. or recuperation materials

- Dirt has strong presence - people get offended by it.

Ecological problem: noxious dirt cannot be seen nor smelled, - only measured (the state of the planet’s atmosphere.) Dirt on that level becomes an "abstract problem".

- Urbanization? dirt is down, clean is up: earth versus sky (skyscraper) up town - down town?.

Religious architecture? (the spot where they are build on in relation to the environment?)

- Waste and dirt of the industrial production: plastic waist, pollution

The dirt that we produce industrially - or by consumption, is the same dirt we are confronted with. (dirt as a part of the production cycle)

- What is the cultural definition of dirt?

considered as dirt in one culture could be something else in an other?

- Things are not dirty - they become dirt by being used, left behind, not taken care of.

Dirt is a sign of negligence.

- Is dirt always material?

Can a sound be dirty? - or can an image or an expression be?

“Dirty words”.

Has dirt something to do with tabu? (exclusion)

- Dirt is separation in se (Lacan: “castration”)

Were we don’t look at it, we don’t talk about, We want to be separated from it (washing, cleaning)

Dirt has a reversed aesthetic in the washing and cleaning: these are the true aesthetics of dirt (pub for cleaning products)

Dirt as counter-aesthetics?

May be I went far of here from the a literary analysis method for studying novels.

Or may be I was not?

best wishes

Willy

@Willy LJ Van Buggenhout

RE:There is no aesthetic of dirt - (= existential borderline aesthetics)

In Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer tells us: “… guilt was the existential edge of sex. Without guilt, sex was meaningless.” Although guilt is a moral notion, meaningfulness adds an aesthetic dimension. Guilty sex can be associated with dirt (in Mailer’s case, both figuratively and literally, given his preoccupation with scatology):

• “Is sex dirty? Only when it's being done right.” – Woody Allen
• "I thank God I was raised Catholic, so sex will always be dirty." – John Waters
• "A dirty book is rarely dusty." – Anonymous

This suggests there can be an aesthetics of sex that also carries an aesthetics of dirt, which might, for example, distinguish the erotic from the merely pornographic or the licit from the taboo.

It depends on how aesthetics is measured. This largely depends on the cultural codes of societies. Generally speaking though, aesthetics is existent everywhere, even in dirt. There is variance of taste among the diversity of cultures globally.

The Gatesby episode concerns its temporary nature, its superficiality, the accumulation of both people (symbolised as insects) and their leftovers.

Colleague Wilkin,

Thank you.

That reminds me of Karel Capek's allegorical play The Insect Comedy. And it just occurs to me he was making a sly allusion to Balzac's The Human Comedy, which was also an allusion to The Divine Comedy!

Are there really insect metaphors in the Gatsby novel, too? I have to get back to it.

Thank you Colleagues Willy V. and Pfeiffer for your aesthetic replies!

The level of associative logic in Willy's spin on "dirt" leaves my mind spinning like a little Arizona "dust devil"!

I hope somebody actually in anthropology will comment. Maybe they know of a culture where the rich class is closer to dirt than the poorer, thus disproving my key to culture. The burden of proof is on me and I cannot think of any such culture, though I do not possess a huge database of cultures readily searchable.

@Gloria Lee Mcmillan

RE: a culture where the rich class is closer to dirt than the poorer,

A few ideas spring to mind:

• Keeping kosher: If you entertain the idea of Jewish culture, it might be noted that many of the richer, educated, professional-class Jews tend not to keep kosher, thus being closer to the impurities (dirt) that keeping kosher is meant to avoid.
• The very notion of filthy lucre: Christian culture?
• Urine Collection in the Middle Ages: Apparently urine had economic value, e.g. because of its use in the tanning process. Universities and student groups (= upper class) fought over rights to the urine from campus privies.
• Mud baths and facials: In late 19th- and early 20th-century Europe, spas were the preserve of the bourgeois and upper class.
• The Scarab in Ancient Egypt: The god Khepri, depicted as a scarab (dung beetle) renewed the sun every day, rolling it like dung above the horizon, then rolling it back through the nether world after sunset, to repeat the process the next day (the pharaonic and priestly class unlike ordinary folk were in thick with the pantheon).

You might also find something germane in Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas.

try Norbert Elias "the proces of civilization"

(the evolution of that was was considered as dirt (or dirty behaviour)

http://library.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/toc/z2010_1372.pdf

CIVILIZATION AS A SPECIFIC TRANSFORMATION

OF HUMAN BEHAVIOUR 45

The History of the Concept of Civilité 47

On Medieval Manners 52

The Problem of the Change in Behaviour during the Renaissance 60 On Behaviour at Table 72

Examples 72

(a) Representing upper-class behaviour in fairly pure form 72

(b) From books addressed to wider bourgeois strata 80

Comments on the Quotations on Table Manners 85

Group 1: An Overview of the Societies to which the Texts

were Addressed 85

Excursus on the Rise and Decline of the Concepts

of Courtoisie and Civilité ^7

A Review of the Curve Marking the "Civilizing"

of Eating Habits 89 Excursus on the Modelling of Speech at Court 92 Reasons Given by People for Distinguishing

between "Good" and "Bad" Behaviour 97

Group 2:

On the Eating of Meat 99

Use of the Knife at Table 103

7

On the Use of the Fork at Table 1° Changes in Attitudes towards the Natural Functions 1°9 Examples 109

Some Remarks on the Examples and on these Changes in

General 114

On Blowing Ones Nose 121

Examples 121

Comments on the Quotations on Nose-Blowing 126

On Spitting 129

Examples 129

Comments on the Quotations on Spitting 132 On Behaviour in the Bedroom 136

Examples

Comments on the Examples

I will! What a list, Willy!

Have you read cultural and rhetorical theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's famous essay?

It is a widely used essay in many college courses in the US.

"Can the Subaltern Speak?" LINK below to full text.

LINK: http://planetarities.web.unc.edu/files/2015/01/spivak-subaltern-speak.pdf

Gayatri Spivak deals specifically with colonial status and rankings. I guess this is the way the British junior officers reported to Majors, etc. They said, "Sir! May the Subaltern speak?" Spivak changes this to make a point to "Can the subaltern speak?

She concludes "No, the subaltern cannot speak," because--once heard--the subaltern is no longer a subaltern in terms of her communication theory.

What this means is two-fold: the speaker gets out of being silenced, but no longer is fully part of that group, which if ever experienced, is quite sad. I may have it wrong and somebody can clarify or correct. This essay is one of my guiding stars.

Biog of Spivak:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gayatri_Chakravorty_Spivak

To Gloria Lee Mcmillan

Dear Colleague, yes, apparently I misunderstood something, but that doesn't matter. The answers of my forerunners and your own example (with Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby) let me assume that interesting people is requested now to mention some examples of other authors, texts or events - okay, no objections. I am hopeful you are ready to deliver the starting points of a theoretical framework considerung the complex relations between dirt and culture.

Undoubtly "culture" avoids things of reality which are for all human being unbearable: turd, gross, the loathsome in the gutter. But being forced to live in the world of dirt is the fate of many, poor people; they have their own practice and strategies to overcome. It is not clear if you this subject-matter define as culture. Or is from the beginning (von vornherein) your conception of cultur beyond such dirty living?

I am confused that the running discussion uses two different concepts of culture: the real living and culture as sum of literature and arts. Of course in naturalistic essays or dramas (Zola, Brecht, etc) you find dirt enough, and in this view culture lives from dirty paintings, texts, music (rap texts are often dirty and play with this fact; and loud heavy metal is not bearable for many persons.

Only one word to the problem of Afroamerican living in the time of the Black Codes and then in the first half of 20th century. The lynch justice of the US-South was mostly unpuished; it was more than only a dirty "culture"; it was murder. Jane Addams opened not only Hull House in Chicago for Afroamerican she supported actively

Ida B. Wells, who demonstrated as Afroamerican women against lynching. White culture was indeed in distance to the dirt of Black gettos. Jane Addams wrote also articles for the NAACP; the most important book of black culture is - in my modest view - still the treatise from W.E.B. Du Bois (1903) about the soul of black folk. And 1911 published Mary White-Ovington her book "Half a Man" about the living of black people, mostly black woman, in New York. That is dirt enough, I think. Ich bitte um Entschuldigung, dass ich etwas weiter ausholte, natürlich interessiert mich Ihr Projekt weiterhin. Besten Gruß, Hein Retter

Dear Colleague Retter,

When I asked whether a key to culture may be found in measurable distance from literal dirt and trash, as well as the "dirty work "affiliated, you are quite correct, I meant the real, literal "dirt" and "trash." But language holds such polarizing emotion towards "dirt," "trash," and "dirty jobs" involving getting, as Germans say, "verschmutzt," living in polluted places, that I am not surprised that the metaphorical meanings have entered the thread.

The Bodhisattva and Dirt (considered rhetorically rather than religiously)

I am so pleased that you mention Jane Addams and her work in the dirty part of Chicago, which ran counter to her upbringing as a young genteel girl from the wealthy, clean, unpolluted Chicago suburbs. Jane Addams also fits the concept of a being who trades off living the most comfortable existence to stay and help the suffering. The Bodhisattvas delay going to Nirvana to help the suffering, though they could go there immediately.

What causes a Bodhisattva to arise when the whole weight of culture pushes in the other way; that is, away from dirt? Does this complicate the question of whether the distance from dirt is a key to culture?

I am simultaneously writing posts and trying to write another fiction story.

I know few have heard of this book but psychoanalyst Joel Kovel's 1981 study The Age of Desire, case studies of his patients, brings forth how money is tied to dirt in the mind via Freud and how Marx and feminists also had their views. Kovel followed up with White Racism: a Psychoanalytic History. In This latter text, Kovel traces via various textual analyses the issue of "purity" and "whiteness" and the idea of "darkness" and "filth" that (more than we think) unconsciously work on our every waking moment. Kovel even brings in Hermann Melville's Moby Dick and the great white whale as embodying some of these divergent obsessions.

I found a nice little image of a cracked, smudgy, and damaged Bodhisattva (I like it better than perfect and gilded images.)

Besten Gruß, Glo McMillan

Dear Gloria,

Yes I red Spivak.

Here what Roland Barthes wrote half a century ago:

The oppressed is nothing, he has only one language, that of his emancipation;

The oppressor is everything, his

language is rich, multiform, supple, with all the possible degrees of

dignity at its disposal: he has an exclusive right to meta-language.

The oppressed makes the world, he has only an active, transitive

(political) language;

the oppressor conserves it, his language is plenary, intransitive, gestural, theatrical: it is Myth.

Time zone issues. I am just starting to answer emails.

Colleague Willy: Great job of associative thinking!

In order to balance that less-than-friendly attitude of all the world's cultures toward trash and the people whose jobs make them 'verschmuzt,' then, the imagination turns to our young folks. They could use a story like The Brave Little Trash Truck.

Here's is another problem :

How to translate a text with respect to the original meaning when the language of the oppressed is to be transeltad in the language of the oppressor.

There will always be "blind spots" that remain.

Dear Colleague Willy,

I believe that fiction is the nearest means to get people into subjective states of the oppressed. Dickens did that very effectively in such novels as Oliver Twist and Hard Times. Because of Dickens' fictive empathy towards the poor, England's most genteel critics tried to render his work irrelevant by claiming Dickens focused upon "sentimental" themes. ("Oh, poor Little Nell. How tear-jerking of Mr. Dickens.") If the same emotions manifested in those characters far from dirt, these emotions would be called "noble and carthartic passion" and not "mere sentiment."

There you have it; Dickens' main characters often lived too close to "dirt" and "trash." But Dickens kept going. He was undeterred.

J.M.Coetzee : "Waiting for the barbarians" a clear association dirt-exclusion form society

Dear Gloria,

thank you very much for friendly answer, some days after that are gone in the meantime I am still not sure if I understood your project about "dirt" and culture properly. That could be caused by my onw limits in English and in understanding the complex cultural background. Your note on Bodhisattva, for instance is for my an absolutely new aspect. Certainly, I can understand that the idea of enlightened divinity is very far removed from the "realiries of earthly dirt (thiss was also the same in former times) but what is here the connection between nineteenth-century novels and individual dramas or literary genres? - I only know Bodsavantta by hearsay - that's all. However, two of my children have become very eager accting Buddhists; not the idea of suffering of Indian Buddhism plays a role for them, they are followers of the Japanese Nichiren Buddhists, a very secular view, turned to life. But the religious aspect plays no role in your project, you said, I should like l observe furthermore, beside my own work.

Best wishes for your project, Hein

PS My knowledge about the situation of Afroamericans in the US incl. history is a byproduct of a larger project about John Dewey. Although the great philosopher and educator called for anti-racism, he never really cared about the problems of the "colored people". I can't catch it, hat he is celebrated also today as though nothing has happened in history; all his visions on democracy were not more than words, the father of pragmatism was not practical, in no respect.

(This will be long but translation is below.)

Ich danke Ihnen für Ihre nachdenkliche Antwort, Hein,

Ich werde auf Deutsch beginnen (Google translate Vielfalt Deutsch).

Die Entfernung vom Dreck kreuzt mehrere akademische Fächer. Bitte beachten Sie, dass unabhängig von Kultur oder ideologischen Nationalstaaten (kapitalistisch, kommunistisch, muslimisch, hinduistisch) die Oberschicht weiter vom Dreck entfernt ist als die unteren Schichten. Das ist wichtig. Um es zu wiederholen, hat keine Ideologie eine Auswirkung auf das Verhältnis "Abstand vom Schmutz".

Ist das nicht nur eine offensichtliche Beobachtung? Wenn nicht, warum?

Der am 30. April verstorbene Psychoanalytiker Joel Kovel, der am Albert-Einstein-Krankenhaus lehrte und in Yale ausgebildet wurde, verrät, dass "Dreck" und die mentalen Vorhängeschlösser des menschlichen Geistes am engsten verbunden sind. Die "kultiviertesten" Menschen sind die am meisten unterdrückten und rassistischen Menschen, weil "Schmutz" unbewusst mit armen Menschen und dunkleren Menschen in Verbindung gebracht wird. Nach Kovels Ansicht irrte sich Freud, weil er ahistorisch war und sich weigerte, sich mit diesen Aspekten zu befassen.

Lassen Sie diese Umkehrung der üblichen Werte deutlich werden, denn diese Psychoanalyse entdeckt alle Arten von Reinigungs- und Reinigungsritualen als die Ursachen von Rassismus und Kastengesellschaft.

Dies ist das "schmutzige Geheimnis" der Kultur. In seiner sorgfältig erzählten Sammlung seiner eigenen psychoanalytischen Patienten zeigt Kovel, wie sehr die Obsessionen über "Schmutz" und die Entfernung von "Schmutz" die Wechselbeziehungen zwischen den Menschen beeinflussen.

Diese Arbeit von Kovel überschneidet sich mit Thorstein Verblens amüsierten (aber ernsthaften) Vorstellungen von "auffälligem Konsum" und "auffälliger Verschwendung". Veblen versuchte 1899 ein logisches Schema für die offensichtlich sinnlosen und verschwenderischen Verhaltensweisen der Oberschicht zu erstellen. Veblen bemerkte auch, dass "Entfernung vom Dreck" in seiner 1899er Theorie der Freizeitklasse ein mächtiges gesellschaftliches Organisationsprinzip war. Die Oberschicht führte das durch, was Veblen "virkäre Freizeit" nannte, um zu beweisen, wie weit sie von der Arbeit entfernt waren. Die Rituale der Religion der anthropomorphen Gottheit waren Ersatz von Tributen zu den Vorfahren barbarischer und räuberischer Häuptling. Die Theorie der Ästhetik dreht sich ähnlich um "Abstand Form Schmutz und fleißige Arbeit." (Lesen Sie über Throstein Veblen, der ein norwegischer Immigrant in die USA war, um zu sehen, was ihm geholfen haben könnte, die Gesellschaft als distanzierten Beobachter zu analysieren.)

Der Bodhisattva (mein Rhetorik- und Kommunikationssymbol) steht im Gegensatz zu diesen Ansichten, um den Menschen zu helfen, die Starrheit solcher Klassen- und Rassendiskriminierungen zu verlernen. Zum Beispiel Vincent van Goghs Arbeit bei den Bergleuten in Le Borinage. Solche Bodhisattvas haben immer schreckliche Hindernisse, weil das ganze Gewicht der Kultur und auch, wie gezeigt, religiöse Hierarchien dagegen sind, die Ketten der traditionellen Voreingenommenheit aufzuheben. Nur wenige dieser Leute sind bekannt, und Jane Addams ist übrigens in den Vereinigten Staaten fast vergessen. Ist dir das bewusst? Stellen Sie sich vor, sie wäre jemand, der in der dominanten kriegerischen nationalen Richtung war und nicht 40 Jahre in Chicagos Slum verbracht hat! Erwägen. (Das Wort 'Consideration' kommt aus dem Lateinischen für 'Geh mit' und 'zu den Sternen'. Wenn wir ' verhalten sich rücksichtsvoll,' gehen wir zusammen zu den Sternen, wie mein alter deutscher Professor einmal sagte.)

Living closer to dirt can also be insightful. Weren't Vladimir and Estrogan practically living near a rubbish heap? The proximity to dirt in relation to the economic divide is worth exploring though.

Thank you, Colleague Nazir Ali!

Yes, this whole issue of dirt-o-phobia is manifest across many disciplines and cultures, including religious rituals.

TRANSLATION of reply to Hein.

Thank you for your thoughtful answer, Colleague Hein.

The distance from dirt crosses several academic fields of study.

Please note that no matter what culture or ideologically-based nation states (capitalist, communist, Muslim, Hindu, ) the upper-class is farther from dirt than lower classes. That is important. To repeat, no ideology has any effect upon the "distance from dirt" ratio.

Isn't this just an obvious observation? If not, why?

The psychoanalyst Joel Kovel, who (sadly for us) died on April 30th and who taught at the Albert Einstein Hospital and was trained at Yale, thoroughly reveals that 'dirt' and the mental padlocks on the human mind are most closely connected. The most 'cultured' people are the most repressed and racist people because 'dirt' is unconsciously associated with poor people and darker colored people. In Kovel's view Freud erred because he was ahistorical and refused to deal with these aspects.

Let that reversal of the usual values be clear because this psychoanalysis discovers all sorts of cleansing and purification rituals to be the the causes of racism and the caste society.

This is the "dirty secret" of culture. In his carefully narrated collection of his own psychoanalytic patients, Kovel shows how much the obsessions about 'dirt' and distance from 'dirt' affect people's interrelations, segregated housing and schools, etc.

This work by Kovel intersects with Thorstein Veblen's amused (but serious) ideas on "conspicous consumption" and "conspicuous waste." Veblen tried to make a logical scheme for the obviously futile and wasteful behaviors of the upper-classes in 1899. Veblen also noted that "distance from dirt" was a powerful social organizing principle in his 1899 _Theory of the Leisure Class_. The upper class were performing what Veblen called "vicarious leisure" to prove how far from work they were. The rituals of religion of the anthropomorphic deity were substitutes of tributes to the ancestors' barbarous and predatory chief. The theory of aesthetics similarly revolves around "distance form dirt and industrious labor." (Read about Thorstein Veblen, who was a Norwegian immigrant to the US to see what may have helped him to analyze society as a distanced observer.)

The Bodhisattva (my rhetorical and communication symbol) contrasts with these views to help people unlearn the rigidity of such class and racial discriminations. For example, Vincent van Gogh's work among the miners in Le Borinage. Such Bodhisattvas always have terrible obstacles because the whole weight of culture and also, as shown, religious hierarchies are against lifting the chains of traditional biases. Only a few of these people are known and, by the way, Jane Addams is almost forgotten in the United States. Are you aware of that? Imagine if she were someone who went in the dominant bellicose national direction and who did not spend 40 years in Chicago's slum! Consider. (Con + sider comes from the Latin for 'go with' and 'to the stars.' When we show 'consideration,' we go together to the stars, as my old German professor once said.)

A fairy tale commenting directly upon "distance from dirt"! Cinderella--She of the Cinders. However, the story upholds the basic "distance from dirt" ratios in that Cindy is really Upper-class forced to live as Working-class by her mean sisters. There is no real comment upon "distance from dirt-ist" philosophy here. Too bad. This story has potential and may be adapted. There are variants all around the world.

We in the field of rhetoric and communications will ask what rhetorical function such a folktale has for its readers. For what does Cinderella's narrative argue?

Wikipedia overview:

Cinderella (Italian: Cenerentola, French: Cendrillon, German: Aschenputtel), or The Little Glass Slipper, is a folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression and triumphant reward. Thousands of variants are known throughout the world. The title character is a young woman living in unfortunate circumstances, that are suddenly changed to remarkable fortune. The story of Rhodopis, recounted by the Greek geographer Strabo in around 7 BC, about a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Egypt, is usually considered as the earliest known variant of the "Cinderella" story. The first literary European version of the story was published in Italy by Giambattista Basile in his Pentamerone in 1634; the most popular version was published by Charles Perrault in Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697, and later by the Brothers Grimm in their folk tale collection Grimms' Fairy Tales in 1812.

Although the story's title and main character's name change in different languages, in English-language folklore "Cinderella" is the archetypal name. The word "Cinderella" has, by analogy, come to mean one whose attributes were unrecognized, or one who unexpectedly achieves recognition or success after a period of obscurity and neglect. The still-popular story of "Cinderella" continues to influence popular culture internationally, lending plot elements, allusions, and tropes to a wide variety of media. The Aarne-Thompson-Uther system classifies Cinderella as Tale Type 510A, Persecuted Heroine.[5]:24-26

Hello, Colleagues,

There is a new branch of environmental education that will dovetail well with our analysis of the novels of late 19th through the 20th C. via a lens of "dirt" and "trash."

This study is a start and then looking at its bibliography will probably yield other useful studies.

RE: "Race, Class and the Global Politics of Environmental Inequality" Global Environmental Politics Volume 5 | Issue 3 | August 2005 p.70-94

If anyone would like to comment or to add more references, I am most appreciative. Thanks!

Distance from Dirt from the women's perspective:

Brown, Phil, and Faith I.T. Ferguson. 1995. Making a Big Stink: Women’s Work,Women’s Relationships and Toxic Waste Activism. Gender and Society 92 (2): 145–172.

Jane Addams's well-known campaign in the late 19th C. to clean up the 10th Ward around Hull-House in Chicago is discussed among other activist narratives. Addams set up a "Sanitation Corps" of teen boys (who had a club at Hull-House) with capes and "pick-up" poles with spikes and drilled them like a platoon because they wanted that kind of military activity. Better fighting disease-producing filth than shooting fellow humans, said Addams. (Something we could emulate today, as well.)

Survey and comparison of novels for distance from dirt among characters. Others may follow this pattern as well and report your results, improvements to plan of research. I would like collaborators.

PHASE 1: Create the word clusters using an online thesaurus.

LINK: http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/generate

PHASE 2: Locate corpus of Anglophone fiction--Found corpus at Project Gutenberg. 142 writers' fiction texts. 400 MG unzips to 1.2 GB.

LINK: https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~lahiri/gutenberg_dataset.html

I expect to run the corpus from a flash drive rather than over load my old PC.

Query to Data Analysts: Is there any fast and dirty way to tag characters so it will be clear who is speaking in the result text strings?

I hope Anthropologists (and armchair anthrpologists) will let me know the state of thinking about Mary Douglas and her system of dirt and purity. Douglas comes at this problem of culture being the distance from dirt, dirty jobs, etc. differently in cross cultural studies resulting from fieldwork and textual exegesis. I have been waiting to hear about the dirt connection from within the field.

Anyone out there willing to share a comment? As always, your comments are most welcome.

Douglas, Professor Mary, and Mary Douglas. Purity and Danger : An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, Routledge, 2002. ProQuest Ebook.

Phobias that are unconscious can affect behavior.

Kovel, Joel The Age of Desire: Reflections of a Radical Psychoanalyst (1981) Douglas, Professor Mary. Purity and Danger : An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, Routledge, 2002.

Hollywood Reporter   3/29/2017

LINK: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/how-trump-adviser-stephen-miller-divided-a-santa-monica-synagogue-989250

Presidential advisor Stephen Miller (on immigration plan) already had a reputation at Santa Monica High as a contrarian who was openly anti-immigrant (and, in a widely reported incident, had abandoned one friend because he was Latino). On this day, Miller argued that students shouldn't have to pick up their own trash — that was janitors' work. Some found it funny, but the crowd booed Miller off the stage. Gould expected Miller to be deflated afterward. "But he was ecstatic," he recalls. "He said it had gone exactly as he'd wanted." Now, Gould, who also is Jewish, struggles with Miller's newfound power. "I can't begin to explain what it's like to have actually heard racism come out of the mouth of a person who has influence over legislation in this country," he says. Adds Justin Gordon, who attended Hebrew school with Miller, "A lot of people who went to school with him are sick to their stomachs."

DIRT and TRASH in Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_: Update on the rhetoric of social stratification in R&J...

Shakespeare in early modern period of English culture demonstrates how modern exogamy (voluntarily marrying outside your group) rattles the social stratification structure in modern western societies. ETYMOLOGY of exogamy: (ɛkˈsɒgəməs) [f. Gr. ἔξω (see exo-" having to) + γάµ-ος marriage + -ous.]

Even enemies of the same ethnicity and social rank, as presumably the Capulets and Montagues were evenly matched in this way, can dehumanize and turn the 'other' into dirt.

20th C. CASE: an Irish Catholic grandmother in Chicago saying in front of her grandchild that she would rather her son had married a 'prostitute' than a 'Presbyterian.' Now this sentence is a rich field of stratification tokens involving dirt.

The qualities of the affluent middle-class Presbyterian (management-oriented, rather than labor-oriented) are supposed a group for those below to emulate, but here one can see the group loyalty outweighing the urge to emulate the "uppers," as Thorstein Veblen might have predicted in his _Theory of the Leisure Class_.

Aside from the everyday examples, we can see this turning the other to dirt in this exchange in Romeo and Juliet, Act I. Sc. 1 *** Modern Text

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Enter SAMPSON and GREGORY of the house of Capulet, with swords and bucklers (small shields)

SAMPSON Gregory, on my word, we’ll not carry coals.

***SAMPSON Gregory, I swear, we can’t let them humiliate us. We won’t take their garbage.

GREGORY No, for then we should be colliers. __________________________________GM: Actually, colliers are coal miners . That _____________________is a mis-translation but gives more the intended

_____________________meaning of trash. Night coal porters.)

***GREGORY (teasing SAMPSON) No, because then we’d be garbagemen.

SAMPSON I mean, an we be in choler, we’ll draw.

_____________________(Reader supplied: 'choler' relates to 'cholera,' the _____________________big diarrhea.)

***SAMPSON What I mean is, if they make us angry we’ll pull out our swords.

GREGORY Ay, while you live, draw your neck out of collar.

***GREGORY Maybe you should focus on pulling yourself out of trouble, Sampson.

SAMPSON I strike quickly, being moved.

***SAMPSON I hit hard when I’m angry.

GREGORY But thou art not quickly moved to strike.

***GREGORY But it’s hard to make you angry Gregory continually implies that Sampson isn’t as tough as he’s acting.

SAMPSON A dog of the house of Montague moves me.

***SAMPSON One of those dogs from the Montague house can make me angry.

GREGORY To move is to stir, and to be valiant is to stand. Therefore if thou art moved thou runn’st away.

***GREGORY Angry enough to run away. You won’t stand and fight.

SAMPSON A dog of that house shall move me to stand. I will take the wall of any man or maid of Montague’s.

***SAMPSON A dog from that house will make me angry enough to take a stand. If I pass one of them on the street, I’ll take the side closer to the wall and let him walk in the gutter.

THE PRO-ANTHROPOLOGISTS WEIGH IN AT LAST

One anthropologist I know locally said that Mary Douglas made a case in her study Purity and Danger that loathing of feces and, by extension, 'dirt' also is a fact in the higher primates.

But in reply to Douglas's biology-is-destiny approach, a group of cultural theorists said her binary approach clean-dirty, in-out, sacred-profane leaves out HYBRIDS and LIMINAL STATES on the boundary. Perhaps this is why Mary Douglas is not as current as was was the case.

• To be perfect means dead, of course. Comes from Latin per- fecit (through with the making of.) Communications, culture, and rhetoric theorist Kenneth Burke said that humanity was "rotten with perfection."

Is humanity, then, wired in aversion and degrees of "excellence" (coming near to "dead perfect") the goals of human survival is the many ways that social "strat" divides people who, otherwise, could discuss and collaborate?

Comments? Hello, anthropologists--I know you're out there...

Dear Colleague Willy,

I have been thinking about your post.

Quoted:

QUOTE

The oppressed is nothing, he has only one language, that of his emancipation;

The oppressor is everything, his

language is rich, multiform, supple, with all the possible degrees of

dignity at its disposal: he has an exclusive right to meta-language.

The oppressed makes the world, he has only an active, transitive

(political) language;

the oppressor conserves it, his language is plenary, intransitive, gestural, theatrical: it is Myth.

END QUOTE

In rhetoric, we tend to look for an "excluded middle" in binary propositions like yes, no and up-down.

So let's hybridize this distance from dirt not into two polar opposites but made hybrids. Take for a musical instance, Frederic Chopin, someone who swam in the crystal pond of Parisian society (father French and music prof) but also the more opaque waters of Poland under occupation (mother Polish from some more humble background as poor relation to some noble family.) We might call this family embodying a "wide distance from dirt ratio." I said we might, but we don't have to.

Chopin's distance from dirt range changes wildly in his music. Always written in the metrical formal values of classical western keys but look at the "Winter Wind" Etude No. 25 and how far that is from the waltzes and nocturnes beloved in Parisian society. That is my new offering here. I have a painting-in-progress of Chopin's relationship with Parisian sophisticates, who are fantailed carp. (I didn't think of the carp as symbols at first, but a friend said "Chopin's face looks like a mask. You should work on it to bring in more emotion.") No, he had to wear a mask for the Parisians of their cultured, or distanced-from-dirt, society. My bluish stage 2 of Chopin shows this social structure well. (The carp are in the state of denial since they are known bottom feeders and not really distanced from dirt at all.)

So I have the image of this stage 2 of Chopin befriended by Fantail Carp painting and there is an essay in Scientific American analyzing the math behind magical states of liberation, because who can hear Chopin's Etude "Winter Wind" and not feel the pulse of liberation? This is myth and this also comes in many forms, not just one. If you cannot get the essay in Sci Am, I can email it, Willy.

This essay is very insightful! The agitation in Etude No. 25 "Winter Wind" and its shimmering in distancing from dirt (swinging from calmness and serenity and passion and liberation).

"METAMAGICALTHEMAS:The music of Frederic Chopin: startling

aural patterns that also startle the eye" / Douglas R. Hofstadter

Scientific American, Vol. 246, No. 4 (April 1982), pp. 16-31

My cat still doesn't care for Chopin much.

LINK: color representation animation of visual patterns in this Etude Op. 25 No. 11 "Winter Wind."

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIVW-ZQr1pg&feature=share

G

Largest and Most Valuable 'Coprolite" (fossil feces) examined

https://www.facebook.com/Channel4/videos/10155208790062330/

This piece of Viking feces from London is now insured by Lloyd's.

Given my hypothesis that 'distance from dirt' is involved in cultural ritual and stratification, how does a piece of feces called 'invaluable' fit? This is Viking feces, not just any feces.

I looked into the actual web site of Channel 4 and it is a host site for contributor-produced media. Therefore, this is comedy about issues of dirt and purity. The metaphor easily extends to racial purity motifs, so psychoanalyst Joel Kovel's _White Racism: A Psycho-history_ probably could apply to why this particular video on the most expensive coprolite was produced. Analyzing why this is funny (some may disagree that this is funny or that it may, in fact, be unfair to Vikings, Viking coprolites, the intellectual work of anthropology.) I lave this as an open-ended question but evaluating coprolites certainly fits our "distance from dirt' and culture theme.