![]() However, in all these elisions, the underlying rhetoric that permeates excremental (non)discourse is clear the effective removal of filth and waste from the body of the city is essential in forging and maintaining social, psychological and cultural boundaries. Perhaps the relegation of this most essential system speaks more of contemporary society's approach to human excrement: something to be forgotten with the first flush, an object to be eliminated from the home and diverted to the outskirts of the city, a solid that should be sublimated in some state-sponsored plant as we wash our hands clean of it. Of all the corporeal functions that underground infrastructures support, the sewers and the removal of waste remain the most ‘invisible’ and unrecognised in the representation of the modern city. ![]() ![]() Richard Trench and Ellis Hillman, London under London (1984) There are arteries bearing the body's fluids, lungs enabling it to breathe, bones giving it support, muscles endowing it with strength, nerves carrying signals, and bowels disposing wastes. ![]() Like the human body, London hides its organisms within it. ![]()
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