Rituals of Purity: Sipping from a Nasoni
In Rome, water fountains as seen in the image above called "nasonis" spit out an everlasting flow of free drinking water. Anyone can come up to the nasoni and drink directly from the spout or stick their finger in a hole on the spout that functions to change the flow to go upward for easier drinking access. The fountain in the image is no doubt ancient, weathered down in color and form. The individual in the image puts their mouth and hand right up to the spout of the nasoni in the middle of the street, the excess water spilling into the bowl under to be recycled.
In Mary Douglas's piece, Purity and Danger: An analysis of concept of pollution and taboo, she takes the definition of "dirt as a matter out of place" (Douglas 2002: 44) and says that "dirt offends against order. Eliminating it is not a negative movement, but a positive effort to organise the environment" (Douglas 2002:3). We collectively decide what we constitute as dirt or dirty as what offends our sense of order. In chapter 7, Douglas reinforces her concept of dirt by describing the body as "a model which can stand for any bounded system" in which we carefully control what enters in order to protect this complex system. In our society all margins of the human body are dangerous. These boundaries between the inside and the outside symbolise and push our concept of social order, in which we carefully constitute what is allowed. Douglas metaphorically describes the Coorgs to "treat the body as if it were a beleaguered town, every ingress and exit guarded for spires traitors" as an example of a culture that strictly regulates their bodily margins and function as a way for their group to maintain their feeling of social order.
When I first arrived in Rome last semester, I vividly remember the moment on our long orientation walking tour when our guide mentioned we could stop for a drink of water if we needed it. He pointed to the nasoni in the middle of the street where anyone could walk up and grab a quick sip of water and go on with their day. I immediately was struck by a feeling of hesitation and discomfort; how could water from the street in a worn-down ancient fountain possibly be safe to drink? My peers and I laughed as we bent over to drink from the water spout as this act was clearly foreign for all of my other study abroad friends. I believe my feeling of discomfort was constituted by multiple factors, how we regulate water purification in the United States is very different from Italy. In the United States, most people don't even drink tap water in their homes without going through many rituals such as putting it through a water purification system. After reading Douglas's piece, I believe that it is not that these rituals are necessarily drastically changing the quality of the water we are drinking, but more that enacting these rituals helps us feel comfortable and maintain our own sense of order in this disordered world. Water coming from a faucet where we can't see the original source instills fear in us, as we are uncomfortable by the fact that we can't control where the water is coming from. By putting it through a purification device, we feel like we are only drinking pure water, separating it from the foreign substances it could have been polluted by.
Comments
Post a Comment