Conclusion: Decay as Gift: Composting American Shit

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the value of selected excremental fiction for environmentalist thinkers as they propose alternatives to ruinous systems of waste management. Because authors approach human waste as a resource for bringing readers home to our connectivity to each other and the world, they provide compelling visions of how readers might re-evaluate decay as fertile gift to the world. Rather than promoting zero waste, novelists explore forms of waste management that don’t promote pollution of environments, but instead work through our status as waste-producing bodies who can fertilize the world or poison it. Connecting insights from novels to a discussion of careful composting of waste to avoid pollution of waters, this chapter suggests that literary delight rather than disgust in our excremental nature provides rhetorical strategies that will be useful for larger environmental movements.