Writing on the background of faeces requires a courageous academic. The release of not just one, but
two volumes on the topic in 2000 may have been motivated by the possibility of Y2K. The 1978 French
original of French psychotherapist Dominique Laporte's Histoire de la merde was published in English by
MIT Press, and Inner Hygiene: Constipation and the Pursuit of Health in Modern Society was released by
American historian James C. Whorton. Laporte's essay is the educated, inventive, and disjointed print
version of a cocktail party soliloquy. It is best left unread for individuals who like a logical, linear
argument. The essay, which was written by the author when he was in his twenties, captures the
optimistic mood in French academics following the 1968 student upheaval. The book "is typical of a wild
and adventurous style of 1970s theoretical writing that strove to mix theory, politics, [End Page 400]
sexuality, pleasure, experiment, and humour," as the end notes state [inside back cover]. The six brief
chapters that make up History of Shit are each accompanied by a varied collection of pictures that the
editors ostensibly added.