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Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Toward a Theory of Disgust
Reading the science blogs this morning—in my native Russia, I was a scientist of no small repute—I came across this item about the dangers of extreme depilation. As I read, I recoiled in horror as I read about the depilation procedure, but when I read of its unintended consequences, my horror turned to disgust. Not of the woman, nor of her depilated parts—I am no misogynist—but by the “gross” distension, the “copious” discharge, and the “oblitaration of space by edema.” As one of those unfortuates unblessed with much visual imagination, I wonder as to the source of my disgust. It cannot be the mental act of picturing these distensions, discharges, or obliteration, as I do nothing of the sort. I searched the usual databases for an answer, and found a chart in this article:
I must admit, I did not find it clarifying. Ruskin is also of little help:
Disgust, properly so called, is a minor degree of horrror felt respecting things ignobly painful or offensive. (Modern Painters, 4: 372).
My response diverges from horror not in degree but kind. Besides, Ruskin defines “horror” as anything “in which the laws of life are violently and unnaturally interrupted with such inflection of pain as nature usually forbids: as in the body’s being torn or dashed to pieces—or burnt” (ibid., 371). The text which I have been recommended, Robert Rawdon Wilson’s The Hydra’s Tale: Imagining Disgust, alternatively amazes and, yes, disgusts; but its relentless focus on “compound affects,” the commingling of intellect and imagination, and as noted earlier, I am lacking in the visual component of the latter.
And yet I still feel disgust, on a level on par with Wilson’s descriptions. The very phrase by which he categorizes one model—“slime-viscosity-dissolution”—turns my stomach slightly. There must be other models of digust, theories and philosophies of it, which focus on its linguistic aspect, on the way disgusting words themselves cause a “psycho-visceral” response absent visual imagination. Saying this, I know, returns us to the linguistic exceptionalism of the 1970s, but I do not argue that all reality is linguistically constructed, merely that this aspect of mine is.
Comments
There’s an anthropological theory of taboo, represented in one form by Edmund Leach and in another form by Mary Douglas, that centers on categories and their boundaries. It is better that things be entirely within one category than ambiguously straddled between two or more categories. Those things that are ambiguous are likely to be taboo, disgusting. Slimy things—are they liquid or solid, or are they disgustingly ambiguous?
Here’s one classic statement on disgust:
It was found that the objects of disgust are wastes of the body, to which a meaning of baseness is attached; analogously the waste products are also biologically inferior substances. The reaction of the organism toward these substances is, physiologically, elimination, and, psychologically, aversion. The symbolic, neuro-muscular, and neuro-vegetative features of the reaction are manifestations of an oral rejection or of defenses against oral penetration. Since the attitude of the organism toward body-waste is elimination, the reincorporation of these substances would be literally a perversion. Disgust is a protest against this specific form of perversion.
From Angyal, A. “Disgust and Related Aversions.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 36 (1941): 393-41, at 403.
There’s also this funny suggestion (not a key point of the essay) in Rozin, Paul and April E. Fallon. “A Perspective on Disgust.” Psychological Review 94 (1987): 23-41, at 26.
Alternatively, a biological perspective could argue that the real self-outside border is the lining of the gut, because the gut can be viewed as a tube through the body, and hence the lumen of the gut is not part of the body. Presumably, on this account, if one rammed a tube (pacem, human subject committees) through the navel and out the back (deftly exiting to the right or left of the spinal column) and then passed disgusting items through the tube, people should not be disgusted.
I think some combination of Angyal with Leach, Douglas, and Kristeva’s Powers of Horror is probably the best approach to disgust.
You do know that Ruskin rejected his newlywed Effie out of disgust for her pubic hair, right?
As Amy Poehler said once on Weekend Update, “There was a time when a lady-garden was as big as a slice of New York Pizza.”
"Effie out of disgust for her pubic hair”
That’s one theory. Menstruation is a better one.
Sorry, Conrad, for me, it’ll always be the pubes. An educated man of the 19th century would have heard about female menstruation—it’s in the Bible, fer chrissakes. But pubic hair is women’s best kept secret. Remember, Venus had to cover up with the long locks dangling from her head. Apparently, the Greek Pantheon had a twofer special at Madame Vlad’s House of Wax.
[Insert feminist anger over dudes talking about lady gardens.]
Luther, your wish is our command. More seriously, though, I’ll take Karl’s recommendation of Kristeva to heart—I haven’t read her in years, but it seems like a combination of the sort he proposes may relieve me of this deadlock.
Has anyone here read Winfried Menninghaus’ Disgust: The Theory and History of a Strong Sensation? I have it on my list, but, er, I’m <del>lazy</del> soliciting opinions.
’hearing about’ is not the same thing as seeing, and esp. smelling.
No such luck, Karl. On another note, a fellow named Ed writes the following of this post:
A Valve correspondent investigates how descriptive language leads to personal disgust. The interesting question is whether one’s personal reaction is joined at the hip to a larger groupthink response. For example, if you or I see a steaming pile of shit being whipped up on a hot plate (and as the twisted bastard concocting this example in the early morning, I could probably go a lot further in disgusting you), then we might both agree that this is disgusting. But at what point do our individual responses relate to some conformist impulse? And is there some responsibility of the author to balance a reader’s judgment of a disgusting image with that of how far one goes in describing it? Discuss with class.
The citation is complimentary, I believe, even if the tone suggests otherwise.
The bibliography of William Ian Miller’s Anatomy of Disgust is pretty comprehensive and might offer some more leads.
John Donne was not repelled by the “hairy diadem”. Quite the opposite.
cf Critique of Judgment, 5:312. Kant is maybe a little confused here, but he’s on to something. The ugly’s unpleasantness repels, where the disgusting’s unpleasantness (somehow) attracts.
That chart, by the way, is awesome.
I read the “Hydra’s Tale”, mentioned above. I was really struck by the autobiographical introductions to each chapter as well as all the personal anecdote. The story about the golden shower amply illustrated the “slime-viscosity” dissolution. Another thing: this is the only book on disgust that discusses the representation of disgust in literature and film as well as art.