Disgust SUNY series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory Rodolphe Gasché, editor Disgust The Theory and History of a Strong Sensation Winfried Menninghaus Translated by Howard Eiland and Joel Golb State University of New York Press Die Herausgabe dieses Werkes wurde aus Mitteln von Inter Nationes, Bonn, gefördert. The introduction and chapters 6, 7, and 9 were translated by Howard Eiland. Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 8 were translated by Joel Golb. Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2003 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 Production by Michael Haggett Marketing by Fran Keneston Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Menninghaus, Winfried. [Ekel. English] Disgust : the theory and history of a strong sensation / Winfried Menninghaus ; translated by Howard Eiland and Joel Golb. p. cm. — (Intersections) Includes bibliographical references (p. ). ISBN 0-7914-5831-8 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5832-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Aversion. 2. Aesthetics, Modern. I. Title. II. Intersections (Albany, N.Y.) BH301.E45M4613 2003 128'.37—dc22 2003057264 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents INTRODUCTION:BETWEEN VOMITING AND LAUGHING. BASE LINES OF A PHILOSOPHY OF DISGUST 1 Exposition ...1/ Subject Matter and Objectives of the Present Study ...5/ Aurel Kolnai,“Der Ekel”(Disgust) . 16 / Democracy as Source of Disgust: William Ian Miller’s The Anatomy of Disgust ...20 1THE DISGUST TABOO, AND THE OMNIPRESENCE OF DISGUST IN AESTHETIC THEORY 25 The Beautiful as Vomitive . 26 / Aesthetic Infinity as Antivomitive . 31 / “Mixed Sensations” and the Exception of Disgust . 33 / Pleasure and Displeasure ...35/ The “Darkest of all the Senses” and the Collapse of Aesthetic Illusion in Disgust . 38 / Semanticized and “Crude” Disgust ...45 2DISGUSTING ZONES AND DISGUSTING TIMES: THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE IDEALLY BEAUTIFUL BODY 51 The Ideal Skin and Disgust at Folds and Wrinkles, Layers of Cartilage and Fat . 51 / Disgusting Depths and the Body’s Openings . 54 / Forever young . 58 / The Gaping Mouth ...60/ Nose-Disgust and the “Greek Profile”...64 / The “Flattened Ear”...66 / “Disgusting Breasts” and Ideal “Hills” . 67 / Invisibility, Unseen Nakedness, and “Wetted Garments” . 69 / A Body “Without a Belly” . 71 / The “Spare Behind”...71 / Excision, Castration, Hermaphroditization: the Phallus in the Field of the Beautiful ...72/ The “Hypergigantic” Sex of the “Colossal Woman”...75 / Wounds, Dismembered Limbs, Flayed Skin: v vi CONTENTS The Body as a “Disgusting Thing”...78 / Beautiful Death and Disgusting Decay . 81 / The Ugly Old Lady . 84 / Repression or Differentiation? . 91 / Disgust, Purity, and Impurity in the Aesthetic ...96 3“STRONG VITAL SENSATION” AND ORGANON OF PHILOSOPHY: THE JUDGMENT OF DISGUST IN KANT 103 Disgust and Pleasure . 103 / Disgust as a Goal of Education . 108 / Smell, Taste, and the “Vital Sensation” of Disgust . 109 / Disgust, Laughter, and “Dark Conceptions” . 112 / Disgust as an Organon of Intellectual Critique . 113 / Disgust as Organon of Practical Action . 115 / Disgust, Happiness and Unhappiness, Ennui ...118 4POETRY OF PUTREFACTION: “BEAUTIFUL DISGUST” AND THE PATHOLOGY OF THE “ROMANTIC” 121 Classical Disgust and the Basic Alterations of the Aesthetic Field around 1800 . 121 / The Disgusting as Stimulus-Increase and Recipe of Modern “Shock”-Aesthetics . 123 / The License of “Disgusting Impotence” and the Decay of the Negative Principle . 125 / Disgusting Souls, Disgusting Times, and the Art of the Disgusting: The “Romantic” Ubiquity of the Once-Tabood . 128 / Rosenkranz on the Disgusting (1): Putrefaction as an “Inverse Becoming of the Already Dead”...131/ Baudelaire’s Poem “Une Charogne” . 134 / Rosenkranz on the Disgusting (2): The Return of Indigestibility in the System of Dialectic Appropriation ...139 5THE “NO” OF DISGUST AND NIETZSCHE’S “TRAGEDY” OF KNOWLEDGE 147 Plato, Jesus, and Morals as World-Historical Agents of Disgust . 149 / “Ressentiment” and Weakness as Catalysts of Modern “Moralizing”—The Disgusting Mixture of Lies and Innocence . 151 / “Mollycoddling” as Disgust at one’s own Cruelty . 154 / The Disgusting Body and Nietzsche’s Physiology . 156 / “Great Disgust” and Contemporary Literature . 158 / Disgust and Cognition . 160 / Education for Disgust . 165 / Overcoming Disgust . 167 / Nietzsche Vetula ...178 CONTENTS vii 6THE PSYCHOANALYSIS OF STINKING: LIBIDO,DISGUST, AND CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN FREUD 183 Interpretations of Disgust in Evolutionary Theory before Freud . 183 / Freud’s Birth . 185 / Disgust, Aesthetic Culture, Antieaesthetic Libido ...186 / The Triumph of Libido:the “Perverse” Overcoming of Disgust . 193 / Perverse Father, Servant Girl, and Prostitute . 196 / Habemus Vetulam . 203 / Disgust and the Choice of Neurosis . 208 / Excretion as Prototype of Social Acts, and the Copro-Erotics of Language . 213 / “Disgusting Abuses,” “Primeval Devil Worship,” and the Equation of Analyst and Torturer . 218 / Art as Suspension of Disgust and Guiltless “Enjoyment” of the Rejected . 220 / Research on Disgust in Empirical Psychology after Freud ...222 7THE ANGEL OF DISGUST: KAFKA’S POETICS OF “INNOCENT” ENJOYMENT OF “SULPHUROUS”PLEASURES 227 7.1. Ugly Maidservants, Fat Old Whores, Sexual Disgust, and “Sulphurous” Obesssions ...228 Felice and Other Women with Un-Greek Noses, Skin Defects, and Bad Teeth . 228 / “Old Maids” . 234 / “I Want Only the Stout Older Ones” . 236 / Disgust with Conjugal Sexuality versus Pleasure in Disgusting Sex Outside of Marriage . 241 / “Innocence” and “You Must Possess Every Girl!” . 248 / “Dirty Fellow,” Dancing and Swinging Pigs, Stinking Bitches and Self-Knowledge . 249 / Kafka the “Flabby Worm:” The Method of Making “Abominable Peculiarities” Invisible through the Form of Their Disclosure . 254 7.2. The Transformation of the Abject into “Guiltless Enjoyment:” Writing as Devlish-Angelic “Deceiving without Deception”...256 7.3. Disgusting Sexuality in Kafka’s Novels ...261 Amerika, or the Trajectory of Male Innocence in the Realm of “Repellent” Female Practices . 261 / Loathsome Power and K.’s “Sexual Etiquette” in The Trial and The Castle ...272 7.4. A Poetics of Eating and Vomiting ...281 Broken Engagements and Disgust with Meat, Spoiled Old Food, and Laxatives . 281 / On Hard Sausages and Filthy viii CONTENTS Breakfasts: Nutrition and Narration in Kafka’s Amerika . 286 / Breakfast, Old Woman, and Arrest: The Opening Chapter of The Trial . 291 / Orgies of Flesh-Eating and Intoxication with Blood in Kafka’s (Hunger) Stories ...294 7.5. Incisions in Flesh and the Knife of Literature ...298 Torture, Truth, and Disembowelled Pigs . 307 / “Like a Dog:” K.’s Execution as the Summa of Kafka’s Knife-Poetics . 310 / The “Stupidity” of Torture ...316 7.6. The Wound in the Text and the Text as Wound: The Story “A Country Doctor”...318 7.7. Beer-Drinking Hearse-Drivers and Cheerful Gravediggers ...332 7.8 “Horrible Words” and Kafka’s Physiology of Writing ...334 8HOLY DISGUST (BATAILLE) AND THE STICKY JELLY OF EXISTENCE (SARTRE) 343 Anti-Aesthetic of the “Formless:” Materialism of the Debased, Pollution of the Beautiful, Self-Mutilation, and the “Bliss” of Anal-Sadistic Ravages . 343 / Disgust Prohibitions and their Transgression as Societal “Core” and Stimulating Medium of Erotic Violence . 348 / “La Nausée: c’est moi”—Sartre’s Elevation of Disgust to the Sole Authentic Experience of Existence ...355 9ABJECT MOTHER (KRISTEVA), ABJECT ART, AND THE CONVERGENCE OF DISGUST,TRUTH, AND THE REAL 365 Repression, Repudiation, Abjection . 366 / Abject Mother, Symbolic Order, Desire . 370 / Abjection, Disgust, and Jouissance . 372 / Literature as (Perverse) Reclamation of the Abandoned . 378 / Rhythm, Laughing Apocalypse, Happy Guilt . 381 / Abject Pleasure, Disgust, Truth and the Real . 385 / Grand Narratives of the Heterogeneous . 387 / AIDS, Disgust, and Affirmative Abjection: On the Political Appropriation of Kristeva . 389 / The Academic Career of the “Abject”...393 / Abject Art ...395 NOTES 403 BIBLIOGRAPHY 453 Introduction Between Vomiting and Laughing Baselines of a Philosophy of Disgust EXPOSITION “Disgust” is accounted one of the most violent affections of the human per- ceptual system. Kant, one of the first theoreticians of disgust, called it a “strong vital sensation.”1 Such sensations “penetrate the body, so far as it is alive.” Whether triggered primarily through smell or touch, eye or intellect, they always affect “the whole nervous system.”2 Everything seems at risk in the experience of disgust. It is a state of alarm and emergency, an acute crisis of self-preservation in the face of an unassimilable otherness, a convulsive struggle, in which what is in question is, quite literally, whether “to be or not to be.” This accounts, even in apparently trivial cases, for the peculiar gravity of the distinction at issue in disgust, the distinction between digestible/whole- some/appetizing and unpalatable,3 between acceptance and rejection (vomit- ing, removal from proximity). The decaying corpse is therefore not only one among many other foul smelling