Dominique Laporte
Dominique Gilbert Laporte was a French writer and psychoanalyst, author of the book Histoire de la merde ("History of Shit").
In 1981 he received his doctorate in psychoanalysis from the University of Paris VIII, where he also taught in the department of psychoanalysis.
He wrote numerous articles on psychoanalysis, theology and art published in Le discours psychanalytique, Art press. and many other magazines. He worked frequently in the psychoanalytic journal Ornicar?.
Along with writing his own works, poems and essays, he was the editor of the French edition of the study by John G. Bourke “English Scatalogic Rites of All Nations: A Dissertation upon the Employment of Excrementicious Remedial Agents in Religion, Therapeutics, Divination, Witch-Craft, Love-Philters, etc. in all part of the Globe", first published in 1981 year.
He was friend with Michel Foucault and Edmond Jabès.
“To the black man, the white man looks and smells like a corpse. To the white man, the black man has the color and odor of shit. Their mutual hatred is based on a reciprocal recognition: the white man hates the black man for exposing that masked and hidden part of himself. The black man hates the white man's need to pull himself up from the earth. The black man sees in the white man's need the blind arrogance of one who thinks himself immortal. But he who brings civilization cannot help but feel immortal. This is why he smells like a corpse: he is constituted by the return of the repressed "remnant of earth," which clings to him as much as to any man.”
“This little pile of shit, heaped here before my door, is mine, and I challenge any to malign its form. This little heap is my thing, my badge, a tangible sign of that which distinguishes me from, or likens me to, my neighbor. It is also what distinguishes him from me. His heap will never be mine. Whether he be friend or foe, this alone will allow me to recognize if we are alike: neat, clean, negligent, disgusting, or obviously rotten.”