PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Prologue



The controversial "Sensation" exhibit which opened at the Brooklyn Museum of Art on October 2, 1999 received sensational responses from the public, such as the hurling of dung. The epicenter of the cultural upheaval was The Holy Virgin Mary painted by Chris Ofili, a young British artist of Nigerian descent. The image portrays a black woman decorated with some shellacked elephant dung the artist claims is symbolic of his African heritage. That symbolic element is invaluable and could, if taken advantage of, work a transformation of dung into gold, or, at least, of foolishness into the wisdom it presently occludes.



Psychological Implications of Elephant Dung



If we are to tolerate the vestiges of "primitive" religions represented in Chris Ofili's post-modern painting The Holy Virgin Mary, then, in order to keep our conscience clean, we should give some brief regard to the post-modern psychoanalytic return to the Primitive, at least in reference to elephant dung and associated matters. We therefore note a reference thereto by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.



According to Sherry Turkle in her book Psychoanalytic Politics, Lacan raised the elephant dung issue before a MIT audience in 1975. He said he was reasonably certain in his capacity as an analyst that man does have an interior: the evidence he found for that interior was the presence of excrement. Lacan claimed that man is the only animal who does not instinctively know what to do with his dung, except the dog, who is also civilized and is therefore also dung-encumbered. Lacan said that elephant dung does not occupy much space even though it is reasonable to expect it to require, considering the size of the animal producing it, enormous accommodations. Then he equated civilization with excrement. He remarked that it would take a long time for people to understand what he was talking about. His audience thought he was delirious and senile--he was 72 at the time.



Elephant-Dung Natural Gas



Lacan must not have been familiar with the production capacity of elephants. Thai researchers have recently generated electricity from elephant-dung natural gas. An elephant produces 88-110 lbs. of dung per day, enough to produce cooking gas for a family of three, or it can be used as feedstock for an electric generator. But the cost is not cheap. The minimum price of construction of a fermentation pit, pipeline and storage tank is around $800 and a generator that could use the gas costs around $2,667. The Thai ministry responsible for the project plans to release a report promoting use of the method nationwide, especially in the North and the Northeast where most of the country's domesticated elephants are found and the problem of how to dispose of the elephants' waste is most acute.  -(AP)- Bangkok, Thailand, February 23, 2000



Despite that contradiction to Lacan's hypothesis, to be fair we shall render a few extractions from the ancient literature in his support or his general position.



Sacred Elephant Dung



Elephants themselves have long been associated with divinity and wisdom. The elephant is the Indian dragon with the snake of wisdom for its proboscis. It is the great god Indra's indispensable steed or vehicle, called Airavata, one of his necessary auspicious signs, equally important if not more so than his chakra, jewel, queen, treasure and horse. Airavata. meaning "produced from the ocean", came from the Ocean of Milk stirred up at the Creation. He is a cloud-white or milky-white elephant. Wherefore wars were once waged for the mere possession of a white elephant, and their images were placed as capitals on pillars and worshiped.



Celestial elephants have wings and can fly like clouds. It has long been known that they, as does the Chinese dragon, bring luck and abundance down to Earth. In fact,  elephants fertilize the Earth Goddess: therefore she loves the sound of approaching elephants. Furthermore, so powerful is the fresh dung of white elephants that an ancient prescription for barrenness provides that infertile women stand in it for one hour prior to intercourse with their husbands.



Moreover, since the elephant is a royal vehicle, elephant dung may be a sign of the coming of a great lord.  For instance, consider the myth about the birth of Buddha. His mother, Mayadevi, fell asleep and dreamed. Bodhisattva, in the form of a white elephant descended from a golden mountain, circled her bed clockwise three times, smote her right side, then entered her womb. A brahmin, upon hearing her account , prognosticated, "Thou shalt have a son. If he dwells in the house he will become a king, a universal monarch  if he leaves the house and goes forth from the world, he will become a Buddha, a remover in the world of the veil of ignorance."



Elephant Dung on Noah's Ark



Incidentally, lest we become to grave about this matter, The Mesopotamians had a sense of humor concerning the droppings of the great elephant: their account of the Flood relates how the elephants stood on one side of the Ark, nearly causing it to roll over and capsize by weight of their excretions.



Lacan Made a Good Point



Those examples alone, and there are many more in the literature, should suffice to support Dr. Lacan's statement asserting the positive relation of dung to the advance of civilization. Nonetheless, a few more references will reinforce our case.



Excremental Capitalism



Take for instance, the first anthropological evidence of capitalism: it seems a primitive North American tribe gorged themselves to speed up their production of ordure, then baked it in the sun and stored it for future consumption in case of dire need.



Excremental Totemism



Also consider the fact that, among the Kujamaat Diola of Senegal, certain individuals used to defecate in secret places in the bushes, then adopted the leavings as their personal totems or animated doubles. And note that an Africa sacred object might be worthless in itself: it is merely the means of communication. For a descendent of Nigerian elephant hunters, that object might very well be a clump of shellacked elephant dung, a symbol of power intended to wish happy elephant hunting as well as the capture of many erotic butterflies by the illustrious sons of "The Holy Virgin Mary."



Post-modern Excremental Psycho-anal-ysis



That which is called "primitive" is not as primitive as it sometimes seems when we proceed to analyze it, hence we return to psychoanalysis in hopes we may obtain good therapy during our excremental discourse.



The evolution of dung-consciousness in the developing child must be mentioned in our context. According to the psycho-anal lore, a child becomes intensely interested in its productions during the anal stage. According to the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, the child exchanges the wet, stinky and sticky product for clean dry sand, although he might pour water in the sand or show a predilection for mud. That product is, in turn, traded for pebbles, rocks and marbles. Hard currency, jewels and precious metals might eventually follow. If a man has been raised properly, he will not want to touch dirty money: liquid currency is disgusting to him. Working capital must not be held in the form of cash in pocket or in bank accounts but must be fully vested in productive assets. A hygienically inclined man will prefer plastic cards, and have his digital statements handled by his accountants. However, he might often be involved in construction projects that leave petrified dejecta all over the land, such as buildings, roads, machines and other stools of power.



Several sorts of characters might emerge because of the different quirks of toilet training. A child might become an artist. Every true artist is a sort of rebel. The rebellious child might start his first savings account during the training process just to give himself the pleasure of squandering it as he pleases despite the best efforts of his parents. However, he might scorn savings altogether because his parents cherish the same.



On the other hand, because of some other accident of upbringing during the critical anal stage, a child might become an uptight tightwad, a constipated person who might know he belongs in analysis but does not want to pay for it; by the way, the Greek word for analysis means "to loosen up."



Post-modern Exremental Therapy



We have by no means exhausted the prospects of civilization and its discontents relative to the anal erogenous zone. Yet we can have comfort in knowing that the latest group therapy practice may provide a great deal of relief to the malcontents and the discontented. Two hour sessions are conducted while the group sits on toilets;  the pioneering analyst got this idea from the customary practice of men in ancient Rome who sat for hours on public toilets chatting with each other while taking care of business. Naturally, this new anal therapy is being subsidized by the United States Government.



National Implications of Anal Therapy



Indeed! The Surgeon General of the United States has defined mental illness as a mental state interfering with production and relationships. A man must achieve optimum productivity in our society in order to have fully productive relationships, yet his duty to consume and to maximize production may interfere with those relations. In any event, a healthy individual must make at least an adequate or "normal" contribution to the Gross National Product. Consumerism is the official state religion: continuous production is worshiped because of the manna that products supposedly contain, and because of the cathartic release of tension. Therefore the new anal therapy is conducive to the religion of consumption and productive, and therefore merits the allocation of public funds.



Our Excremental Civilization



Mr. Lacan might not be so crazy and coprophilic as he seemed when he said civilization is excrement. Of course, he employs a figure of speech which apparently accounts for a massive sublimation of a primitive movement. I opine we are going overboard: a great deal of crap is now being frantically produced in developed countries just so people can get a bite to eat.