Why do you give a shit?

I’ve had certain moments in my life where my so-called ‘rants’ have produced neither compassion, curiosity or critique, but rather a flat affect response of “Why do you give a shit?”

There are, of course, variations on this, such as “Why do you care so much” or “Why do you give a damn,” or “Why do you let him/her/them/it have power over you?”

Then there is a question of who is allowed to give a shit. Not everybody in society has the right to speak, ask, enquire, or frankly, to give a shit. Put simply, not all shits are made equal.

Today, the 26th of June, 2024, is the day Julian Assange returned home. Julian Assange has faced smear campaigns ranging from rape allegations or that his leaking of documented war crimes has caused harm to US personnel, all of which have been debunked. His peers and his government have betrayed him. So the question is, why should anyone give a shit?

The expression, “I don’t give a shit,” is a vulgar derivative of the older expression, I don’t give a damn,” dating back to at least the 19th century.

What is the etymology of “giving a shit,” what is the historical context, and what is the psychoanalytic reading of the expression?

According to Etymonline.com, “[shit] has extensive slang usage; the meaning "to lie, to tease" is from 1934; that of "to disrespect" is from 1903. Also, see shite. Shat is a humorous past tense form, not etymological, first recorded 18c.” While “to shit bricks is to "be very frightened," attested by 1961. The connection between fear and involuntary defecation has generated expressions in English since 14c. (the image also is in Latin), and probably also is behind scared shitless (1936).”

While the Middle English “shit” is connected to a general sense of “excrement,” but also is connected to “obnoxious person” by 1508, meaning “misfortune, trouble.” In 1868, in a South Carolina context, “up shit creek” meant to be in trouble. But the slang, not give a shit as in “not care,” was used by 1922 and has maintained its meaning till today. “Shit-faced” (to be drunk), “shit list,” or “shit-hole” originally in 1937 meant rectum, but by 1969, it had transformed to meaning undesirable locations. Shitload is for “a great many” by 1970. “Same shit, different day” was attested by 1989, while to “get one’s shit together” is to manage one’s affairs attested by 1969. From 1942, to be “shit out of luck” is to exhaust one’s options for achieving one’s goals—unlucky, screwed.

The word shit itself comes from Old English, “scitan,” which cognates other Germanic languages, ultimately deriving from Proto-Indo-European roots meaning “to cut, split.”

But what about to give?

Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual theory of development proposes that personality develops through a series of stages focused on different erogenous zones of the body. For Freud, the anal stage is the second stage in this theory, occurring roughly between ages 18 months to 3 years. During the anal stage, a child's libido is focused on controlling bladder and bowel movements. The primary conflict during this stage is toilet training, where parental approaches can significantly impact personality development. For Freud, children derive pleasure from retaining or expelling feces, and the tension between the child's desires and societal expectations can lead to different personality traits. Strict toilet training may result in an anal-retentive personality characterized by orderliness and control, while lenient training may lead to an anal-expulsive personality marked by messiness and rebellion. Freud also suggested that attitudes toward feces in childhood could influence later attitudes toward wealth and possessions.

Freud also drew connections between attitudes toward money/gold and early childhood experiences with defecation. In this framework, not giving a shit can be interpreted as a refusal to part with something of value, to reflect an anal retentive personality, one which has difficulty letting go.

Our first excrement was our first gift to our parents. The first shit we gave was a gift, for we have been brought into the world. We may not remember the look on our parent’s faces as they witnessed the production of our first shit, but that is undoubtedly imprinted in our personality.

But often, the question is an injunction, “Why do you give a shit?” is not necessarily an innocent question, but often a form of censorship or an attempt to forbid discussion. To stop the shit. Jacques Lacan furthers Freud’s idea that a traumatic encounter with the real (that which refuses symbolization) destabilizes the subject. Today, where we can access decapitation of babies, sadistic tortures and rape by the IOF, the traumatic real abound. Is it any wonder where we wish to turn away? To stop the shit, to find ways not to give a shit?

So to assert to someone, “Why do you give a shit” is to assert a value of indifference, detachment, a defense mechanism against feelings of vulnerability or loss. To maintain control. Keep that shit to yourself.

Is it any wonder that we, as a generation, enter a society of war after war, economic bust after economic bust, and we may try to hold on tight? Contrast this with the wellness ideology, where one learns ways to find vulnerability, where we obsessively search for The Cure—the promise of a cure. But who is the cure for? Who reserves the right for wellness under a system of white supremacist capitalism? To quote Fariha Roisin’s 2022 book title, Who Is Wellness For?: An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind?

Donatien Alphonse François, better known as simply Marquis de Sade, was a French writer and libertine, political activist and nobleman known for his novels and imprisonment for sex crimes, blasphemy and pornography. His most notable works, The 120 Days of Sodom (1785) and Juliette (1799) depict a full range of depravity that the word sadism is taken after his name, as someone who enjoys pleasure in inflicting pain on others.

French philosopher Georges Bataille wrote in 1930, as part of Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, in The Use Value of D.A.F. de Sade, "The life and works of D. A. F. de Sade would thus have no other use value than the common use value of excrement; in other words, for the most part, one most often only loves the rapid (and violent) pleasure of voiding this matter and no longer seeing it."

For Bataille, he saw this confrontation with shit as a way to resist fascism’s obsession with purity and order. He later would write his essay, “The Psychological Structure of Fascism, published in 1933-34. Bataille saw this confrontation with the "excremental" as a way to resist fascism's obsession with purity and order. He argued that by embracing the transgressive aspects of Sade's work, one could resist fascist ideology.

So we can ask, what was it precisely that Julian Assange presented with his contribution to Wikileaks, if not the ultimate leakage? For to be “full of shit” means that someone is lying, talking nonsense, or deceptive. Laxative is the cure for constipation.

Today, sadists are mainly used as an accusatory label for someone who enjoys giving pain to others. But as psychoanalyst Avgi Saketopoulou theorizes, Exigent Sadism in today’s fascistic political landscape that extends beyond Gaza but into every pore of our speech and imagination, is there any other way to perceive the resistance against state authority and the brutality against our sovereignty? Within an ideological framework of innocence, Saketopoulou points out the necessity of sadistic resistance as a form of resistance against fascism.

As we see Julian Assange reunited with his family, the spell of fear and apathy cracks, as Yanis Varoufakis reminds us of the betrayal of Assange's peers in the so-called field of journalism, which has been weaponized to spur consent to war.

On the day of Julian Assange’s release, who has revealed the war crimes throughout the decades of not only Gaza but countless piles of shit, Germany enacted a landmark citizen law that explicitly requires applicants to affirm the state of Isreal’s right to exist.

To shit is not to cleanse. To cleanse requires first a premise of a fantasy of a primordial state. A clean slate. Hence, the idea of a cleanse to fantasize about the ability to return to the Garden of Eden. Make America Great Again. But to shit, and further, the enjoyment of shit, is the activation of our erogenous rim. Shit, as the song goes in Lion King, is the Circle of Life. But that shit isn’t exactly something you can sell.