What's This Shit?

“The fact that until recently the word “shit” appeared in print as s— has nothing to do with moral considerations. You can’t claim that shit is immoral, after all! The objection to shit is a metaphysical one. The daily defecation session is daily proof of the unacceptability of Creation. … The aesthetic ideal of the categorical agreement with being is a world in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist. This aesthetic ideal is called kitsch. … Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.”

--Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

In his novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera claims that politics is about kitsch. People with similar aesthetic sensibilities coalesce to advance their collective kitsch. It’s not merely about advocating their own point of view but eliminating competing ideas and dissent as shit, something that stinks up the place, something that messes up the pretty picture, something that reminds us that our aesthetic does not reflect reality in total. The “shit” not only has to be gotten rid of, it has to be denied. The world has to be reordered so that the “shit” no longer exists.

In a complex society that has competing aesthetics in play without any aesthetic being dominate, it is possible to retain your individuality. But in a totalitarian state, kitsch becomes totalitarian, and there is always a drive toward totalitarianism. It is always a threat.

Kitsch comes in an infinite variety. There is heterosexual kitsch, for instance, and with that aesthetic, anything that isn’t hetero, anything that doesn’t fit the gender binary is thought of as shit that needs to be eliminated, erased, denied. Even among gay men, there is the masculine kitsch…the cop, the soldier, the fireman. For some it’s not enough that their masculine ideal remain personal. They want that ideal to be universal.

You can see kitsch operating all around us every day. I think it’s at the root of intolerance in all it’s forms. Human beings can be extremely chauvinistic. There is this tendency to want to destroy anything that is personally offensive, and the driving force behind that isn’t morality but aesthetics. Most of us want to “redecorate” the world as if it were our private homes and the lives of others and their aesthetic sensibilities are of no consequence.