On the toilet as a culture, I agree with the previous commentators. The intellectual culture of the toilet has always fascinated me. As an undergraduate in Bayero University, Nigeria, I found toilet graffiti alternately inspiring, edifying, and troubling. The toilet was the most vibrant intellectual space on campus. It was were students vented against despised professors or courses. It was where they bared their academic and romantic frustrations. It was where they expressed their aspirations, anxieties, ambitions, and fantasies. The toilet was where some of them declared their amorous interests. It was a no-hold-barred space of expression. There was a lot of hateful words on the doors and walls of the toilet as well. It is easy to be offended by this, but I found it equally fascinating because it was an instructive window into the human capacity for evil thought, for hate. Students used toilet graffiti to express what they would never express in public or used it to elaborate on what they might abbreviate in the normative vocabulary of campus etiquette. The toilet graffiti, for me, represented the purest, unmediated source for the narratives of students. What fascinated me was that toilet graffiti was both public and private. Students were expressing their most intimate thoughts, fears, anxieties and hopes in the accessible notice board of the public toilet. But this was done in the temporal privacy of the toilet space, for the toilet is a private space of the one who occupies it. It then transitions to a public space when he/she vacates it. This was a creative merging of the private and public spheres, something that in my opinion scholars have not paid enough attention to as they remain fixated on the binary of the public and the private. I was so fascinated by this phenomenon that I wrote an essay on it for a campus magazine that I edited. As a historian, if anyone wants to write a history of Bayero University in the future, I would strongly urge them to look in the toilets! These "hidden scripts" would be a complementary companion to the official records of the institution. They are a treasure trove of primacy sources, a pure, uninhibited record of students' self-narration.
Coming to the West, I noticed that the intellectual culture of the toilet-space was also very advanced. The graffiti here is as fascinating as that of Bayero University. If you get pass the vulgarity, crass sexism and misogyny, and you have a stomach for egregious racism, you may occasionally stumble on profound little nuggets of wisdom. I am a fan of spontaneous, witty, mundane scribblings, so I find in some toilet graffiti a liberating intellectual refuge from the pretentious protocols of high academic culture. And sometimes, you can discover rare, edifying poetry and prose on the walls, not to mention timeless, accidental (but profoundly insightful) philosophical wit.
My take-away from all these is that scholars have yet to pay attention to the rich intellectual field of the toilet-space. It is understandable. Few people outside the medical profession are fascinated by scatological subjects and phenomena. But I do believe that toilet graffiti is one of the few universals in the realm of human expression. It is a classless space, a great equalizer--a meeting place between the disciplined highfalutin intellectualism of bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie culture and the mundane, carefree wisdoms of the everyday. Intellectual expressions in the toilet-space also does not follow the contours of political economic disparities, or of the technological divide; all that is required is a pen. So, while the computer and other esoteric, undemocratic spheres of expression excludes as many as they include, the intellectual genre of toilet graffiti is more inclusive than it is exclusive. That said, it does seem like the toilet has to be deconstructed as an exclusive zone of scatological activity for a wider appreciation of its rich intellectual culture and positivist subtleties to emerge. Let the literary theorists go to work. Perhaps an essay in Social Text would get the conversation going.
Truly, the toilet is a place of inspiration. Obviously, one budding poet was so inspired to scribble, actually etch, this short poem on the back of a toilet door at Rome airport:
Some come here to sit and think
Others come here to shit and stink
I come here to scratch my balls
And read the graffiti on the walls
Just imagine the inspiration to capture the deeds of a lonely man ion the toilet seat everywhere!
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of toyin adepoju
Sent: Monday, August 02, 2010 8:25 PM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - THE CULTURE OF THE TOILET
I will never forget one fateful day at the University of Benin,when I was passing water near a tree,at a spot which I thought was hidden.The staff toilet is likely to have been out of order or inaccessible. It was not a particularly user friendly place.A lecturer colleague of mine,a chap really committed to the university system in spite of its inadequacies,told me he used to flush the toilet himself using a bucket in the regular absence of running water .The student toilet was a no-go zone.Even the distant sight of the region where the student toilets were located in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences complex was distressing,from what I remember.
It would be wonderful if the situation has improved as I write this.
On that fateful day,as I eased myself in answering nature's call,a voice passed by me: "Good afternoon,sir", and moved on.
I leave you to imagine what I felt.
When I left Uniben for the University of Kent in England,for a long time I could not help wondering at what I eventually came to understand as the English Culture of the Toilet.So much so that the rest room has become one of the major places where I experience inspiration.I used to read in my toilet at home in Nigeria but I entered a new level in England.In recognition of this inspirational zone,and reading that I was not unique in experiencing inspiration in that space,a figure of world historic proportions,the Reformation leader Martin Luther,for example, being described as having had a climatic experience in what the English so eloquently call the Rest Room,I started a Facebook group I named Inspirations in the Loo.
Historical Accounts
Martin Luther:
1. On Martin Luthers toilet from Discovery Channel"Oct. 25, 2004 — German archaeologists have discovered the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation — a stone toilet on which the constipated Martin Luther wrote the Ninety-Five Theses [(Latin: Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum) that launched the creation of Europe's Protestant churches.
Scholars had always known that the 16th-century religious leader suffered from acute constipation and spent hours in contemplation on the toilet seat."
2. BBC:Luther's lavatory thrills experts
"Archaeologists in Germany say they may have found a lavatory where Martin Luther launched the Reformation of the Christian church in the 16th Century.The stone room is in a newly-unearthed annex to Luther's house in Wittenberg.Luther is quoted as saying he was "in cloaca", or in the sewer, when he was inspired to argue that salvation is granted because of faith, not deeds. The scholar suffered from constipation and spent many hours in contemplation on the toilet seat [das klo, as the Germans call it].
'Earthy Christianity'
The lavatory was built in the period 1516-17, according to Dr Martin Treu, a theologian and Luther expert based in Wittenberg.
"What we have found here is something very rare," he told BBC News Online, describing how most buildings preserved from that era tend to have served a grander function.The toilet is in a niche set inside a room measuring nine by nine metres, which was discovered during the excavation of a garden in the grounds of Luther's house.
Dr Treu said there can be little doubt the toilet was used by Luther, the radical theologian who argued for a more "earthy Christianity", which regarded the entire human body - and not just the soul - as God's creation.
The Reformation, which resulted in Europe's Protestant churches, is usually reckoned to have begun when Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg's Castle Church on 31 October 1517.The theses attacked papal abuses and the sale of indulgences by church officials, among other things.
Structural concerns
Luther left a candid catalogue of his battle with constipation but despite this wealth of information, certain key details remain obscure - such as what the great reformer may have used in place of toilet paper.
"We still don't know what was used for wiping in those days," says Dr Treu. The paper of the time, he says, would have been too expensive and critically, "too stiff" for the purpose.
And while it is probable that the inspiration that led to Luther's reforms occurred on this toilet, it is impossible to prove it beyond doubt, Dr Treu says.
Future visitors to Wittenberg's Martin Luther museum will be able to view the new find, though structural concerns mean they will not be free to test its qualities as a toilet"
I dont know the condition of the average 16th century German toilet or of the specific one the great man is reputed to have used,but the point holds:great ideas can visit you in the toilet,particularly if the place is comfortable.
3. Suprising Resonace with Martin Luther King Jr:
While Martin Luther King Jr. was in Birmingham's city jail last April, a group of white clergymen wrote a public statement criticizing him for "unwise and untimely" demonstrations. King wrote a reply—on pieces of toilet paper, the margins of newspapers, and anything else he could get his hands on—and smuggled it out to an aide in bits and pieces. Although in the tumble of events then and since, it never got the notice it deserved, it may yet live as a classic expression of the Negro revolution of 1963:
My Dear Fellow Clergymen":We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say "wait."
...when your first name becomes "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."...when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobody-ness"—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,940761,00.html?internalid=ACA#ixzz0ZN0KzUdW
What is this Culture of the Toilet?
Rather than describe it,I will allude to it through the questions provoked in me by this culture,I being a person who did not have a memory of a culture where the fundamental dignity of clean,comfortable and modern facilities for the expulsion of human bodily waste matter is understood as an uncompromisable must.
How does one have constant running water,enough to always keep a toilet clean?What kind of plumbing is required?How can it be done so that every house,every building,in every inhabited location in a country will have such facilities?
How does one ensure constant power for the lighting of such places?
How does one make sure that one provides special toilet facilities for disabled people?
How can one make sure these places are always clean?How are the cleaners paid?What instruments do they use?
What is the relationship between job satisfaction,economic power,quality of life,country of origin and demographics in relation to people working as cleaners in England keeping these places so clean?Why is it that the cleaners I saw at Victoria train station in London,at the Cambridge local bus stop look Caucasian,the one at the Newmarket intercity bus stop is a Black African,the cleaners I saw at Addenbrookes hospital in Cambridge are Caucasian and Asian,and that my friend who works as a cleaner does so beceause she cannot get a better job beceause she is fleeing the difficult economy of her native post communist Hungary and has difficulty with English?Or another from an East European country is cleaning in order to pay for her education in England?How many English people work as cleaners in a country with a robust social security system,where you can be given money for agreeing to go to school beyond the age of 16?
How can the state finance such a massive but fundamental project as comprehensive provision of functional toilets across the nation and sustain it permanently?How much cost should be borne by the state and how much by the citizens?
You see,the humble toilet and the issues it evokes,the little room not spoken of openly in polite discourse,is a microcosm of human possibility, a miniature universe,relating to questions of social and infrastructural management,resource generation,international migration and international political economics,inspiration and spirituality,great historical movements,human dignity and the relative responsibility of state and civil society.
The English have long solved the equation but their success is due partly to the presence of cheap labour from struggling countries.
My latest wonder in relation to the Culture of the Toilet was my experience this week in Addenbrookes hospital in Cambridge.You don't need to touch anything for the toilet to flush or the tap to run.Just place your hand near the black spot on the toilet wall,and it flushes.Do the same for the tap and it runs.Sensor technology in the name of preventing people from contacting or passing on disease.
An acquaintance tells me that what I have observed in England is taken to a different level in the U.S.He says that the toilets at the University of California,for example, have walls of marble.
According to Nigerian Pidgin:
Na wa!
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