The rhythms of human bodies are profoundly implicated with the time regimes that are dominant in different societies. This article seeks to explicate the relations between the temporal dispositions of one aspect of the body, its defecatory capacities, and the chronological and spatial categorizations of modernity. This latter configuration is understood variously as being characterized by: the social relations of the `civilizing process' (Elias); capitalist economic relations (Marx); instrumental rationality (Adorno and Horkheimer); and patriarchy (feminism). Focusing on each of these aspects of the modern allows us to chart historically the rise of a series of temporal regulations over acts of defecation. However, following the position of Sigmund Freud, we trace out one of the key dilemmas of modernity: while the times when defecation occurs have come under increasing levels of guidance and administration, the human body and its faecal capacities still continue to some degree to operate according to rhythms other than those imposed upon them, thus occasionally effecting a disorderly `return of the repressed' in the realm of systematized time.
Adorno, Theodor
and Horkheimer, Max (1944/1992) Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Verso.
2.
Bakhtin, Mikhail
(1984) Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
3.
Beynon, Huw
(1973) Working for Ford. London: Allen Lane.
4.
Bourke, John Gregory
(1891/1968) Scatalogic Rites of All Nations. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation.
5.
Buck-Morss, Susan
(1977) The Origin of Negative Dialectics. Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press.
6.
Camporesi, Piero
(1988) The Incorruptible Flesh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
7.
Caplow, Theodore
(1964) The Sociology of Work. New York: McGraw-Hill.
8.
Carter, Angela
(1987) The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History. London: Virago.
9.
Cavendish, Ruth
(1982) Women on the Line. London: Routledge.
10.
Clarke, Allen
(1899/1985) The Effects of the Factory System. Littleborough: G. Kelsall.
11.
Corbin, Alain
(1986) The Foul and the Fragrant. Leamington Spa: Berg.
12.
Corbin, Alain
(1995) `The Daily Arithmetic of the Nineteenth Century', in Alain Corbin, Time, Desire, Horror, pp. 1-12. Cambridge: Polity Press.
13.
Douglas, Mary
(1966) Purity and Danger. London: Routledge.
14.
Durkheim, Emile
(1893/1984) The Division of Labour in Society. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
15.
Edwards, Julia
and McKie, Linda (1996) `Women's Public Toilets: A Serious Issue for the Body Politic', European Journal of Women's Studies3(3): 215-232.
16.
Elias, Norbert
(1995) The Civilizing Process. Oxford: Blackwell.
17.
Engels, Friedrich
(1844/1987) The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
18.
Foucault, Michel
(1977) Discipline and Punish. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
19.
Fox, Alan
(1975) A Sociology of Work and Industry. London: Macmillan.
20.
Freud, Sigmund
(1957) Civilization and Its Discontents. London: Hogarth Press.
21.
Freud, Sigmund
(1962a) `Character and Anal Erotism', in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 1962 version, Vol. XVII. London: Hogarth Press.
22.
Freud, Sigmund
(1962b) `Preface to Bourke's “Scatalogic Rites of All Nations” ', in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 1962 version, Vol. XII, London: Hogarth Press.
23.
Freud, Sigmund
(1970) `The Sexual Theories of Children', in Three Essays on Sexuality, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
24.
Freud, Sigmund
and Oppenheim, David Ernst (1966) `Dreams in Folklore', in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 1966 version, Vol. XII, London: Hogarth Press.
25.
Game, Ann
and Pringle, Rosemary (1984) Gender at Work. London: Pluto Press.
26.
Golembiewski, Robert T.
(1965) Men, Management and Morality. New York: McGraw Hill.
27.
Kira, Alexander
(1995) `Culture and Behaviour of Public Toilet Users', paper delivered to International Symposium on Public Toilets, hosted by Hong Kong Urban Council, 25-27 May.
28.
Leguay, J.-P. (1984) La Rue au Moyen Age. Rennes: Ouest France.
29.
Marx, Karl
(1867/1988) Capital, Vol. I. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
30.
McKendrick, Neil
(1961) `Josiah Wedgwood and Factory Discipline', Historical JournalIV(1): 30-55.
31.
Meacham, Standish
(1977) A Life Apart: the English Working Class, 1890-1914. London: Thames & Hudson.
32.
Moore, Barrington
(1984) Privacy: Studies in Social and Cultural History. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
33.
Oakley, Ann
(1974) Housewife. London: Allen Lane.
34.
Palmer, Roy
(1973) The Water Closet. Newton Abbot: David & Charles.
35.
Poggio
(1879) The Facetiae or Jocose Tales of Poggio, Vol. I. Paris: Isadore Liseux.
36.
Pollard, Sidney
(1965) The Genesis of Modern Management. London: Edward Arnold.
37.
Reid, Donald
(1991) Paris Sewers and Sewermen. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
38.
Roberts, Robert
(1980) The Classic Slum. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
39.
Rose, Gillian
(1978) The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor Adorno. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
40.
Rule, John
(1986) The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England 1750-1850. Harlow: Longman.
41.
Sade, Marquis de
(1990) The One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom. London: Arrow.
42.
Sade, Marquis de
(1991) Juliette. London: Arrow.
43.
Sombart, Werner
(1915) The Quintessence of Capitalism. London: T. Fisher Unwin.
44.
Stallybrass, Peter
and White, Allon (1986) The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. London: Methuen.
45.
Taylor, Frederick W.
(1947) Scientific Management. New York: Harper & Brothers.
46.
Thompson, Edward P.
(1967) `Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism', Past and Present36: 57-97.
