Information and other bodily functions

In William Burroughs’ novel Naked Lunch (1959), a ventriloquist trains his anus to talk. It becomes an exceptionally competent speaker, and a consummate entertainer, but gradually begins to take control of the rest of the ventriloquist’s body, ultimately making the ventriloquist himself largely superfluous. It needs only his eyes, which it cannot replace. The story I want to tell here, about how residential homes use a simple paper-based technology to prevent the lower bodily functions from wresting power from residents and employees, is in many ways similar. They use stool records to discipline the functions of the body, to improve the regularity of bowel movements. They structure routines around bathroom visits and derive important information about the habits and needs of residents from their records. The technology focuses the attention of both staff and residents on particular aspects of life in the home, but the stool records have effects that go well beyond how residents satisfy basic bodily needs. They foster a particular social context, causing residents and employees to enter into certain roles, impacting decisions, and conditioning interactions in the everyday life of the residential home. To be properly understood, the technology must be seen in this dual perspective, of structuring physiological and biological aspects of the body, on the one hand, and organizing the social world on the other. The stool records, we might say, give the body the power of speech in the organization.