Contemporary American Literature and Excremental Culture: American Sh*tanalyzes post-1960 scatological novels that utilize representations of human waste to address pressing issues, including pollution of waterways, environmental racism, and militarism. Primarily examining postmodern parody, the book shows the value of aesthetic renderings of sanitary engineering for composting ideologies that fuel ruinous impact on the world as well as human others. Drawing on mid-century psychoanalytic thinkers Norman O. Brown and Frantz Fanon that influenced authors, American Sh*tshows the continued relevance of psychoanalytic understandings of subject development for interpreting contemporary fiction and its continued relevance for literary studies, especially in relationship to waste studies. Ultimately, the monograph reveals how novelists Ishmael Reed, Jonathan Franzen, Gloria Naylor, Don DeLillo, and Samuel R. Delany critique subjects who abnegate their status as waste-producing beings and bring readers back to embrace the filthy body, worldly embodiment, and human connectivity to each other. | Contemporary American Literature And Excremental Culture by Mary C. Foltz, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters