Hygiene As Metaphor

Abstract

In his autobiographical account of growing up in the working-class neighborhoods of Gothenburg on the Swedish west coast, Ronny Ambj8rnsson, a professor of the history of ideas, makes the following observation: “Mother fulfilled the commands of hygiene through frantic cleaning. Everything was polished and rubbed to surfaces so shiny that the germs slipped and swirled out through windows that were almost always open for airing. Light, air, and cleanliness became during the 1930s metaphors for enlightenment and rationality. Mother’s cleaning and father’s studies could be said to belong to the same sphere, two versions of the credo of modernism.”¹ This observation is telling in more ways than one. First, Ambj8rnsson establishes a connection between seemingly disparate but very mundane activities (such as cleaning and studying) and a certain cultural condition characterized by versions of enlightenment and rationality. Second, this juxtaposition is not incidental or provisional, but actually illustrates “the credo of modernism”— or in other words, a distinguishing belief of a certain period of Swedish modern history. This interrelationship between a domestic duty and a formative belief characterizing an age poses a question that is simultaneously philosophical and historical: how does hygiene work as a metaphor for the version of Swedish modernity that characterized the 1930s and beyond?