Teacups and Toilets...Or locating culture and ideology

By Antonio Garcia 

      For the individual, culture is never seen in the same aspect as another sees it. It would be foolish and an ill attempt within the social sciences (sociology, cultural studies, and others) to believe in a universal culture, something envisaged as respectfully monolithic. Though humanity shares a common culture based on innate habits of need (see Maslov’s hierarchy of needs) like food, sleep, excretion, and procreation (what Marx refers to as fixed constants), these habits are interpreted ‘culturally’ throughout the world. For example, in the U.S. eating with your hands is considered vagrant and not acceptable at the dinner table unless one is eating a designated “finger food.” In France, the salad is eaten after the main course in order to clean the palate, yet in the U.S. we serve the salad before the main course. Another example that I enjoy is that of excretion as discussed by Slavoj Žižek when he discusses the interesting design of toilets in the Germany, France, and the United States.  

"In a traditional German toilet, the hole in which shit disappears after we flush water is way up front, so that shit is first laid out for us to sniff at and inspect for traces of any illness; in the typical French toilet the hole is far to the back, so that shit may disappear as soon as possible; finally, the American toilet presents a kind of synthesis, a mediation between these two opposed poles – the toilet basin is full of water, so that shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected" (Žižek, 2006, p.17).  

Of course, Žižek is implying a parallel between ideological culture and its implication on the design of toilets, but his example is an important one. Everyone must excrete bodily waste in some form or another so how is it done, standing or sitting, and in what receptacle? In continuing with Žižek’s idea of toilets as a socio-ideological cultural referent, we can look to the southern countries of Africa in which my friends have traveled. Each time they are fascinated with the toilets there as evidenced by the pictures they feel compelled to take as if westerners would not believe them. In many of the countries like Kenya and Uganda modern European style toilets resembling comfortable seats or thrones are not widely used. In place of these overly aggrandized receptacles there is a hole in the ground. It is a simple matter of squatting and excreting. This universal experience is not one that accompanies the daily newspaper or favorite reading material, nor is it always accompanied by a smooth double-ply toilet paper. In my own travels to the Caribbean and Latin America, the toilets are again one of the most talked about cultural phenomenon by American tourists. In many of the Latin and Caribbean countries there is poor plumbing, so toilet paper is not thrown into the toilet but rather into a trash bin next to the toilet. The Americans I have encountered on my travels consider this to be one of the most disgusting things to do and, as a result, often relegate the appalling nature of this ‘ordinary’ activity as part of their culture. "Culture" and "their" become the language of othering and more so an aberrant othering that constitutes a deviation from ‘cleanliness’ and ‘civility’ (See Freud's "Civilization and its Discontents"). 

      Every culture has come to know and use some sort of container for drinking whether it is a coconut shell, ceramic mug, horn, or porcelain tea cup.  It is the latter that I will use as a notable example ofcultural othering without knowing.  In the movie Towel head (Ball, 2007) there is a scene in the beginning part of the movie in which the next door ‘redneck’ ultra-American family (whose dad is a reservist during the time of the Iraq War) welcomes the new neighbors by delivering a pie to them.  They do not know that the new neighbor is a Lebanese national turned U.S. citizen working with NASA.  The neighbor’s daughter, Jasira, the main character of the movie, moves in with him to learn the ways of being a ‘proper’ and ‘respected’ woman.  As is custom in Lebanon, tea is served to the guest and the woman notices how quaint the teacups are and that they do not have handles.  She unwittingly says “that’s odd” and the Lebanese man responds “not in my country it isn’t”.  Here is an interesting example of an everyday object encountering the process of cultural othering.  The teacups, like the toilets, are grounded in the practice of the group that uses them.  If the teacup does not have a handle perhaps the rim was given an extra lip with which to hold it.  The ordinary teacup in U.S. culture is grafted with a handle and often joked with the snobbish mockery of reminding one to “hold the pinky up.”  It is the simple everyday, albeit ‘ordinary’, artifacts that we take for granted as being culturally created.  The examples of toilets and tea cups serves only to start contemplating how engrained culture is embedded in the individual as it transcends multiple facets of life, i.e., education, etiquette, language, politics, religious practice, etc.