A Politics of Disgust

Selfhood, World-Making, and Ethics

Eleonora Joensuu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429574979
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Arts & Humanities

This book explores the intersubjective nature of disgust, the fascination that often accompanies it—along with repulsion—and the ethical implications of the experience. With attention to what emotions do rather than what they necessarily are, it examines the ways in which disgust works to create structures of meaning about selfhood, interpersonal relationships, and the worlds we inhabit. Offering a critique of existing approaches to disgust, the author advances a feminist intersubjective perspective, drawing on the work of Jessica Benjamin to understand the relational aspects of disgust encounters. Thus, the focus is not on defining disgust definitively, nor debating what objects invoke disgust, nor on whether it is a universal experience, but on the effects of disgust once invoked, what the experience does and the impact it has. Through a case study of incarceration and death by self-inflicted strangulation—a death that was later ruled a homicide—this volume sheds light on the nature of the ethical demands of disgust and its nature as an active struggle for recognition. As such, A Politics of Disgust will appeal to scholars of gender studies, social theory and philosophy with interests in the emotions and intersubjectivity.

1 Mapping the terrain

Approaches to disgust in Western psychology and thought

The [emotional] process almost always begins before the name and almost always continues after it. The realization of the name [of the emotion] undoubtedly changes the feeling, simplifying and clarifying.

(Ellsworth, 1994, p. 193)

Despite the work of theorists across disciplines, disgust remains a difficult emotion to conclusively define. A dictionary definition of disgust seems straightforward:

Strong distaste or disrelish for food in general, or for any particular kind or dish of food; sickening physical disinclination to partake of food, drink, medicine, etc.; nausea, loathing.

(“Disgust, n.,” 2017, n.p.)

Or, similarly,

Strong repugnance, aversion, or repulsion excited by that which is loath-some or offensive, as a foul smell, disagreeable person or action, disappointed ambition, etc.; profound instinctive dislike or dissatisfaction.

(“Disgust, n.,” 2017, n.p.)

As these definitions attest, the general understanding of disgust is that it is a negative experience marked by repulsion and loathing. These definitions also suggest that the objects that elicit disgust are identifiable rather easily. Yet, research efforts towards defining disgust and identifying the elicitors of disgust have “raised more questions than [they have] answered” (Rozin, Haidt, & McCauley, 2009, p. 24). Indeed, the surge in disgust research that began in the late 1990s has been so varied in terms of methodology, guiding assumptions, and disciplinary aims that there is a “striking lack” of conceptual unity (Kelly, 2011, p. 24).¹

My intention in this chapter is not to answer these questions definitively, nor to provide a unified definition of disgust experiences. Given that my overarching focus is on examining what disgust does, rather than what it is, my approach does not necessitate a fixed definition of disgust. As Ellsworth (1994) writes in the quote at the start of this chapter, emotional processes exceed their naming— beginning both before and continuing afterwards—thereby reminding us of the ways in which emotion is always more, always both/and. At the same time, Ellsworth draws attention to the ways in which naming itself shapes the experience of the feeling and as such, highlights the importance of understanding the naming of disgust thus far as these names have changed the experience of disgust. Accordingly, the aim of my discussion in this chapter is to present some of the common themes that have arisen across the varied accounts of disgust, as well as to highlight important elements of disgust experiences that current accounts have overlooked or minimized. I focus on three themes: first, that disgust signals a threat of some kind; second, that disgust is related to moral and ethical issues; and third, that fascination is an element of disgust experiences, though it is poorly understood. These themes are not only the most consistently identified across current research, they also highlight disgust features that are important for an account of disgust’s impact on processes of selfhood, world-making, and ethics. However, despite current literature identifying these elements of disgust, they have nevertheless struggled to connect them to the work disgust undertakes. Consequently, it is important to have a general understanding of the disgust research thus far and its main features in order to identify aspects of disgust requiring further consideration. I consider this a theoretical “mapping of the terrain” that is similar to orienting oneself on a map when arriving to a new place—where am I, what roads brought me here, what are the key features of the terrain?

My consideration of disgust does not begin with the established body of research; rather, I begin with a first-person narrative of one of my own disgust experiences. I wish to situate my analysis in the embodied experience of disgust and, therefore, a narrative of disgust is an important place to begin. A personal narrative is also significant given that my research is positioned within feminist epistemologies that reclaim experience as a valid source of knowledge, and a valid way of knowing. My narrative is not intended to essentialize nor universalize disgust experiences, but rather, to attend to some of the feelings, thoughts, and experiences that can accompany a disgust encounter.

In my limited survey of the existing literature, I will draw on research in psychology, as well as research in the humanities, especially research in philosophy and critical theory, that has considered disgust directly as an object of study. Though these two areas of disgust research may seem unrelated or opposed to one another, they have led classical and modern debates about the nature and operation of emotion.² They also lead current debates about disgust. The psychology research on disgust was one of the earlier attempts at understanding disgust and has provided some of the predominant modern conceptualizations of disgust (Herz, 2012b). The research in the humanities, especially in the areas of critical feminist theory (Ahmed, 2004b) and philosophy (Menninghaus, 2003; W. I. Miller, 1997; Nussbaum, 2004), expands and responds to the psychology research; therefore, I use these two disciplines to draw out major themes in the disgust literature.

Accordingly, my survey speaks across disciplinary lines. Though this method may seem like I am conflating disciplines, this cross-disciplinary approach is intentional and necessary for a thematic survey of the disgust literature. This approach is especially necessary given that it is difficult to distinguish a body of disgust literature as clearly as one can with psychology. In other words, there is not a series of texts in a single discipline outside of psychology that are developing as a unified body of literature on disgust. The lack of a unitary body of disgust literature is compounded by the fact that disgust accounts beyond psychological research often come up as ancillary topics, rather than sustained investigations of disgust per se. For example, disgust appears briefly in the work of thinkers as diverse as Nietzsche (1990, 1993, 1996), Bakhtin (1984), Sartre (1964), Kant (1960, 1996), Bataille (1996), and Douglas (2003). Though these accounts provide insights into aspects of disgust, it cannot be said, however, that they proposed a theory of disgust, or that they were theorists of disgust.³ Consequently, the disgust research in psychology will be the only discipline that I consider on its own. Given that the psychology literature represents some of the earliest dedicated investigations of disgust, examining it on its own provides a sense of how disgust research has developed and changed across its history. From this dedicated examination, I then move to a thematic analysis that includes research from both psychology and the humanities.

After considering current conceptualizations of disgust, I will demonstrate that they have overlooked or minimized important dimensions of disgust. My discussion will focus on three interrelated gaps. First, the inability to account for disgust as a relational, intersubjective experience that is relevant for processes of selfhood and world-making. This will include a consideration of Julia Kristeva’s concept of the abject as Kristeva’s concept of the abject and of processes of abjection represent one of the only approaches that links disgust objects to processes of selfhood. Consequently, I briefly consider Kristeva’s theory in light of my own approach and explain why Kristeva does not inform my own analysis of disgust’s impact on selfhood. Second, I examine the minimization or dismissal of fascination in current disgust accounts. This includes the inability to conceive of how fascination can operate alongside repulsion. I argue that the inability to account for fascination effectively is due to the first gap—the lack of a relational, intersubjective framework. And lastly, these first two gaps contribute to a limited and incomplete consideration of the ethical question in disgust. I now turn to give a first-person account of one of my own disgust encounters.

Locating the embodied experience of disgust: a personal narrative

I have chosen to begin with a personal, first-person narrative of a disgust experience for two reasons. First, I locate my writing within feminist traditions of epistemology that reclaim experience as a legitimate form of knowledge, and a legitimate way of knowing. Consequently, my own experiences of disgust are relevant and legitimate for a study of disgust; they are not “interference” to the pursuit of knowledge as Western epistemic traditions have purported them to be.⁴ Second, as my discussion will detail further on, it is my view that current theorists of disgust (and as a result, theories) have minimized or distanced themselves from their own visceral, embodied, and uncomfortable experiences of disgust. This distancing has resulted in over-simplified arguments that disgust reactions should be cleared away in order to respond to disgust ethically. By speaking from my own experience of disgust, my aim is not only to give a phenomenological account of disgust, but also to enact the theory that I propose in my research and discuss later in this chapter: Personal and theoretical responses to disgust, to the ethical question it poses in every disgust encounter, must not become amnesiac to the churn of our stomachs, the pushes of repulsion, and the pulls of fascination.

My experience and narrative arise in a Western context. It bears the marks of my position as a white, middle-class, cisfemale, queer, able-bodied settler on unceded Indigenous, Coast Salish land.

It is Sunday morning and I am walking on a street in downtown Vancouver. In the evenings, this street is busy with people eating out at restaurants and seeing live music shows, nothing like the quiet that surrounds me now. My eyes are cast down as I walk, looking a few steps ahead of me. Suddenly, I get a faint whiff of something sour. Sewage? Garbage? I flare my nostrils and pull them downwards, furrowing my brow at the same time, not yet sure what the smell is and not sure how I feel about it. As I keep walking, the smell gets stronger and without thinking, my right hand comes up to my nose to try and intercept and block the smell with my fingers. I don’t plug my nose, however, I am still curious as to what the smell could be and where it is coming from. As the smell grows stronger, my eyes start to squint and my brow furrows in a grimace, as if trying to keep the smell from penetrating my face any further. The corners of my mouth pull downwards, and my shoulders start to pull to the side as if trying to pull me away from the smell. Then, I see it. In the doorway to a closed shop is a pool of vomit. It is impressive, both in volume and in how it has sprayed all over the door and entryway. I can see half-digested chunks of food in the vomit among the streaks of grey, orange, and yellow bile and mucus. I slow down as I approach; some part of me wants a closer look. My eyes dart over the chunks of food, wondering what they are and what their pre-digested form may have been. The smell, however, is overpowering at this point. It fills my nostrils, my mouth, my throat. I scrunch my nose and exclaim, “ugh! Gross!” I press my lips together and take the smallest gasps of air through my mouth. Yet, I find myself leaning in towards the pool of vomit, my body half turned away as I peer over my left shoulder. I am fascinated by the small rivers breaking off from the main pool, wondering how ill this person may have been to have led to such an episode and what might have happened to them afterwards. Even as I lean in with my upper body though, my one leg is pointed outwards, as if ready to run or pull away if the smell overtakes, or perhaps if one of the vomit rivers begins to approach my shoe. Finally, I cannot take the smell anymore as it feels lodged in the back of my throat and my own stomach is starting to feel queasy. I start to walk away but turn to take another look as I do. This last look, however, makes me feel as if I, myself might vomit. A shudder passes over my neck and shoulders and I exclaim once more, “bleh,” while sticking my tongue out, as if to purge the last remaining smell, taste, and sight.

The aim of my personal narrative has been to highlight the embodied and ambiguous nature of disgust. Though it is not my intention to analyse the details of this one disgust encounter, there are a few features that are worth highlighting. Many of the physical characteristics I raised—the furrowed brow, the scrunched-up nose, the feeling of nausea, the protruding tongue—are physical markers of disgust in both every day, colloquial experience, as well as in the research literature. My narrative also captures how repulsion can occur alongside fascination and the ambiguity this can cause. My body turned away, yet I physically leaned in towards the object of disgust; there was even a moment where I did both at once. I lingered, took another look and another whiff, while still moving away. Fascination was also evident in my curiosity about what might have happened to lead up to this disgusting scene. I wondered about the person that vomited and the circumstances they may have faced. This curiosity occurred alongside my repulsion rather than separate from it.

Though my narrative is culturally and personally specific, many of the moments I detailed in my narrative are familiar and relatable; therefore, it may seem that defining disgust is a simple task. Yet, definitions have been varied and challenging to pin down. Consequently, the disgust research has been what Menninghaus (2003) aptly names a “history of problems” (p. 6).⁵ In the next section, I consider some of the early ways in which disgust was conceived: psychology’s definition of disgust as a food-rejection mechanism.

Early research efforts: psychology’s conception of disgust as a food-rejection mechanism

Early research on disgust, especially in the discipline of psychology, was generally focused on identifying and classifying disgust. In other words, it was primarily guided by the traditional research question of “what is disgust?” The early and predominant answer to this question built on Darwin’s (1998) work that claimed disgust to be a food-rejection mechanism that signalled biological pathogens that should be rejected (Rozin & Fallon, 1987; Rozin, Haidt, Imada, & McCauley, 1997). Consequently, disgust results in the experience of repulsion that then leads to withdrawal, oral rejection (e.g., vomiting, spitting, gagging, etc.), and avoidance (ibid.). As such, disgust was conceived as the “guardian of the body” as it led to the avoidance of pathogens and diseases (Rozin, Haidt, & McCauley 2009, p. 12). Susan Miller (2004) thereby names disgust as the “gate-keeper emotion” that not only keeps the undesirable away, but also protects “the good” believed to be inside (e.g., health, purity, etc.).

Research on disgust in psychology reflected psychology’s approach to emotion more generally. Traditional work on emotion in psychology focused on identifying basic and core emotions that were considered hard-wired...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: everyday encounters
• 1 Mapping the terrain: approaches to disgust in Western psychology and thought
• 2 Towards a feminist politics of disgust: exposing the social, cultural, and theoretical “lenses” of disgust discourse
• 3 A feminist politics of disgust: Jessica Benjamin, recognition, and reframing disgust
• 4 Meeting the ethical demands of disgust as the struggle for recognition
• 5 The work of disgust: the Ashley Smith case
• Conclusion: matters of disgust
• Index