Selling enemas to replace psych meds, or treat cancer, or cure autism is some dangerous shit.
But Matthew has a tingling sense that the wellness enema craze promises more than false health benefits. Perhaps the coffee might be an artisanal distraction from a more existential promise: a ritual of cleansing and muscular control for a world that feels filthy, guilty, and in absolute chaos. A way of returning to a crucially innocent time when you learned to hold it all in, then given permission to let it all out, and then lovingly cleaned up when you did.
Today, Instagram gives us permission to show it to the world: look at what I made! Look at how fresh and pure I am! Look at how I am polishing my innermost self. Look at this magic of making the invisible visible.
Welcome to your 50-minute analysis session to process Mallory’s brilliant reporting on Thursday: a tour through a labyrinth of dirt, control, differentiation, exhibitionism, shame—and possibly reclamation and integration.
Chapters:
How to Read an Enema
Managing Filth with Freud
Winnicott’s the Best
The Abject
Political Shit
Dear Kyah
Butcherbox promo: Sign up today at butcherbox.com/conspirituality and use code conspirituality to choose your free offer and get $20 off.
Show Notes
Conspirituality 192: Coffee is Your Friend, Not Your Enema
Paranoid Reading, Reparative Reading — Sedgwick
Know Your Enemy: UNLOCKED: Freud and Politics (w/ Pat Blanchfield) on Apple Podcasts
Freud, "Character and Anal Eroticism" | PDF
THE SEMINAR OF JACQUES LACAN BOOK X ANXIETY 1962 - 1963
The child, the family, and the outside world : Winnicott, D. W. (Donald Woods), 1896-1971 : Internet Archive
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
Pro-Trump rioters smeared poop in US Capitol hallways during belligerent attack
Are Anti-Vaxers Really Pooping Themselves Because of Ivermectin?
What Donald Trump Actually Smells Like, According to Ex-GOP Congressman
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Hello, everyone.
Welcome to Conspirituality Podcast, where we investigate the intersection of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian extremism.
I'm Matthew Remsky.
We are on both Instagram and threads at ConspiritualityPod, and you can access all of our episodes ad-free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on Patreon, or just our bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions.
We've also got a book out.
It's called Conspiratuality, How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat.
It's in print, ebook, and audiobook format, narrated by me.
This is a Monday Patreon bonus episode called Living in the Enema Times.
And as promised, it's an extended reflection on our correspondent Mallory's main feed breakdown of the coffee enema industry, mainly through her analysis of the Happy Bum Co.
you might want to listen to that first if you haven't.
Part 1, How to Read an Enema.
to read an enema.
So the subjects we tackle have many layers to them, and we dig through those layers according to our interests and lanes with Derek's focus on pseudoscience and wellness grifting, Julian's insights into cognitive fallacies in spiritually coded marketing, and I tend to look at the psychosocial layer.
So in the Mallory episode, Derek parsed out the pseudoscience of coffee enemas purported to treat serious diseases, and together we picked apart the false premises used to sell the idea.
But we were also pretty modest about the hidden drivers of a trend like this.
Enemas to replace psych meds, treat cancer, or cure autism are dangerous bullshit, but I have a hunch that the wellness enema craze is promising more than false health benefits.
I think it would have to be for this ritual to be as popular as it is.
I propose that the coffee might be an artisanal distraction from a more existential promise.
A ritual of cleansing and muscular control for a world that feels filthy, guilty, and in absolute chaos.
A way of returning to a crucially innocent time when you learned to hold it all in and were then given permission to let it all out and then cared for and lovingly cleaned up when you did.
Instagram gives us the permission to show all of this to the world.
Look at what I made.
Look at how fresh and pure I am.
Look at how I am polishing my innermost self.
Look at this magic of making the invisible visible.
So yes, we're in an age of public enemas and I think that there are some themes and questions pulsing in the hanging bag.
So first, what is filth and how do we demarcate it or integrate it?
You have toxins, so the folk wisdom goes, and they are disgusting and you must separate yourself from them, but you also want to watch them come out and you want to show this to others.
It's like that detox footbath thing.
Second, where do the impulses of control and release and surrender meet?
How do we learn continence and self-mastery but also allow ourselves to forget it?
How do our bodies interact with the world in authority?
Who gives us permission to evacuate?
Or do they order us to do so?
Who cleans up afterwards?
And do they do so with love or with disgust?
Is there a way in which the public wellness enema largely performed by women constitutes a form of reclamation over the body that patriarchy has objected and deems disgusting?
How do enemas and, on the other side, rituals of consumption both define and confuse the boundaries of the self?
On the intake side, we've covered the liver king, spiritual muscle bros who do raw chicken mukbang, people on bone broth monodiets, green juice chuggers and supplement gulpers.
On the purification side, we've covered liver flushes, parasite cleanses, master cleanses, ayurvedic purgations, charcoal tablets, and colon-blowing senna leaves.
