Category Archives: Reading

“Dirt is matter out of place” is the key insight of PURITY AND DANGER: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo by Mary Douglas. I first read the book a little over a decade ago and reread it to accompany Miasma, below; as I thought it holds up well.

Douglas arguments is that things like purity/impurity, clean/dirty aren’t absolute, objective measures but subjective. Just as standards for cleanliness changed when cleaning became easier, so pure and impure, spiritually clean and contaminated, are subjective. The Old Testament marks out clear boundaries between what’s clean and unclean for Jews to eat; in our own era, as Douglas points out, we’d flinch from someone putting shoes on the table while we eat, even if there was no threat of getting dirt on our shoes. Matter out of place is disorder and therefore dangerous.

This is dated in some ways — Douglas’ argument that “primitive” shouldn’t be offensive as a description of certain cultures — and a lot of it is refuting other interpretations of taboo and uncleanness; Douglas mocks, for example, the idea that dietary restrictions in Leviticus are about avoiding unhealthy food (“That paints Moses as less a prophet than a divinely appointed health inspector.”). As she sees it, the “unclean” animals are those that cross boundaries in some way, such as swimming creatures without scales or fins, or birds that don’t fly. It’s thought provoking even if I’m not sure what the thoughts are.

Robert Parker cites Douglas frequently in MIASMA: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion though he’s not sure about some of her specifics: would Jews have found anomalous animals any more unsettling than we find the tomato, the fruit that looks like a vegetable? In studying the role of spiritual pollution in ancient Greece, Parker is more uncertain about drawing conclusions than I remembered from first reading. Do stories of pollution and purification in Greek drama, for example, reflect real life or are they just using conventions the audience would understand? Does horror at being around patricides (among the worst of crimes in Hellenic culture) reflect a fear of pollution or merely revulsion of their evil acts? Did people stay their hand to avoid pollution or was it applied retroactively to explain tragedy (“Your whole family dead of the plague? Guess you shouldn’t have slept with a virgin priestess!”). A deep and very focused dive, but interesting despite the uncertainties.

DIRT AND DOMESTICITY: Constructions of the Feminine was a smaller book released to accompany photos in a museum exhibit. It looks at, in part, how housewives are supposed to purge dirt and disorder from the household but also avoid contamination; servants, particularly POC, provide a useful solution that lets the housewife (or the man of the house — plenty of single men have employed domestic staff) avoid touching dirt while taking credit for mastering it.

While I didn’t reread it, WEEDS: An Environmental History of Metropolitan America by Zachary Falck covers similar issues regarding plants that symbolize disorder and urban decay regardless of the supposed rational reasons for destroying them (fighting hay fever justifies uprooting ragweed but never grass). And like dirt, weeds can become a symbol for unwanted people too.

If you’re curious about how this applies in our modern world, I’ll recommend this old post, or this one.

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NO DIRECTION HOME: The American Family and the Fear of National Decline, 1968-1980 by Natasha Zaretsky argues that 1970s America saw the seismic shocks of the oil crisis, defeat in Vietnam and the loss of millions of good-playing blue-collar jobs as blows to the American family, not just the nation. Vietnam holding American prisoners of war, for example, deprived military families of husbands and fathers; the Arabs (or the oil companies) jacking up prices left families financially strapped, and so on. Even the Bicentennial devoted a lot of time to families as stressing roots and heritage played to minorities and activists who didn’t feel much like celebrating America.

Interpreting all this was another matter. Did losing the Vietnam War mean America had lost its military prowess or that we’d simply over-reached? Had OPEC made us the Arab nations’ play-toy or was the problem that Americans had become too greedy, consuming too much? A lot of the debate blamed women for whatever the problem was: women who didn’t want to give up family leadership when their husband came home, permissive moms whose spoiled kids became radical protesters, cold mothers who drove kids crazy, etc. Zaretsky concludes, however, that the sense of the decade as dysfunctional and despairing (as in Invisible Bridge) didn’t take hold until Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign portrayed the 1970s as the decade of The Family Besieged with himself as the solution. An interesting job.

VANISHING IN THE HAIGHT by Max Tomlinson is a 1978-set noir mystery in which a female ex-con turned PI goes to work for a San Francisco millionaire whose daughter wound up murdered a decade earlier, during the summer of love. Can the PI find the truth before the dying millionaire passes away? This is a solid mystery though I find the serial-killer POV chapters uninteresting, as I usually do. However I do like the period detail, from fashion to gas at the outrageous price of 65 cents a gallon.

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