Санитарната култура: тоалетни предизвикателства
Sanitary Culture: Toilet Challenges

Summary/Abstract: Based on an analysis of the socialist toilet experience, this text argues that (1) the socialist discourse privileged the “upper part” of the body (including the symbolic aspect) at the expense of “the lower part” (including the symbolic aspect); and (2) this discourse also produced and reproduced a “mass” of people, in which individuals were sunk, i.e., were lost, but where, at the same time, they intentionally submerged, in order to efface themselves in a sort of evasion. The socialist regime was fascinated by the practice of organizing gigantesque mass events, filling up the city squares with thousands of people enthusiastically marching in procession; at the same time, and paradoxically, the regime was confused by individual bodies dancing or making love. That is why the biopolitical modernizing strategies of the regime were clearly dissonant with the anatomo-political measures it took with regard to the individual bodies of people.

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