An excrement triangle

"Toilets in America, France and Germany make up [sic.] a semiotic triangle that correlates exactly to Levi Strauss' triangle, so we also have an excrement triangle.

Now German toilets are built in a way that excrement falls on a flat surface at the back and it is flushed through a hole at the front. This way you are dircectly confronted with the excrement - and you can see whether you have worms etc. This is a German ritual.

The French toilets have the opposite system: the hole is bigger and at the back, so the excrement can fall directly into the hole and vanished immediately.

The American variant is a kind of correlative of Levi-Strauss' cooked food, combining the elements: the excrement remains, but it floats in the water.

I had a look at some books on the topic and came to the conclusion that every nation believes theur system makes more sense. But clearly, a complex system is at work here. And if I am to carry on [sic.] with this nauseous example: friends from Vienna told me that in avant-garde student circles the pubic haircut was strictly codified. There is the triange, the new-age hippy way, where everything grows profusely, the yuppie way, where only a small strip may be visible, and the punk style with pubic hair clean-shaven and rings hanging in the clitoris etc. I am always fascinated by the underlying ideologies. And here is the right answer for Lyotard and all those who say we achieved "the end of ideologies". Yes, but as soon as you flush the toilet, you're right in the middle of ideology."


Slavoj Zizek.