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"In dazzling readings of classic French texts, Annabel L. Kim reclaims feces as literary matter. Sidestepping familiar psychoanalytic frames, Kim turns excrement into a force for democracy. From Céline to Duras to Garréta, this caca communism blows up our old ways of thinking. Irreverent and erudite, as funny as Rabelais, Cacaphonies is a genuine scatological pleasure!"—Lynne Huffer, Emory University

"We tend to assume that the trajectory of modern literature repeats that of society and technology (urbanization, sanitation, dematerialization, sanitization, deodorization) in taking us ever further away from the excretory body. It does not, insists Annabel L. Kim. On the contrary, modern literature refuses to endorse the fantasy of being ‘free from or clear of shit.’ Thus, to turn to the excretory body in literary works is to ask what literature’s deepest understanding of the human is, and what literature itself is. Cacaphonies is an extraordinarily engaging project: insightful, serious, self-consciously ‘profane,’ metacritically alive."—Thangam Ravindranathan, author of Behold an Animal: Four Exorbitant Readings

 

"Kim’s readings are creative, bold and surprising. They reek, but they are never gratuitous, and they open up a field of literary waste studies that poses pressing ecological questions."—Times Literary Supplement

 

"Kim’s book offers a fresh, fun(ny), clever, and innovative perspective on canonical texts while weaving through her analysis a discussion about life and death, and about how shit ultimately brings us back to that."—H-France Reviews

 

"A must-read, Cacaphonies provides a truly insightful, engaging, and joyful reading experience."—The French Review

 

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