"Shitting, like death, is a great leveller. It renders beluga caviar indistinguishable from tinned ham, a duchess as creaturely as a dog."

Alex Blasdel

For some reason this quote has reminded me of a Brian Aldiss story I never read but always meant to. In my hazy memory,  Aldiss's speculative train of thought had begun with the fact that religions, in their imagery and their ceremonies, often spiritualize bodily functions like eating (as with the communion wafer) and sex. Aldiss wondered: "well, why not  the excretory functions?". So he spun out a story that imagines a form of religion whose rituals are based around defecation.  

Well, it turns out I have garbled this (read about long long ago, probably in The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction). The novel appears to be Aldiss's early effort, The Dark Light-Years  - originally published in 1964 - and here is a summary of its scenario, which involves a disorienting first-contact between humans and an alien race: 

The Utods are an ancient race who live in a distant galaxy -- they have a highly developed biological system that coincides with the rotation of their planet between three distinct suns. Their social, cultural, and religious beliefs all center on the process (and product) of defecation (no joke), which they see as a gift that symbolizes the ultimate cycle of life where bodies enter the carrion stage and feed the trees on the planet, becoming once again part of the universe. So, the Utods basically sit around in wallows of dirt and shit all day.

They are also giant and kind of hippo-like with six retractable arms and two heads, one that talks and one that shits. They are peaceful, but went through a period of revolution in their culture many generations ago where a sect of Utods shunned defecation for cleanliness, invented all kinds of spaceships and things, but eventually died out in a big war between themselves. The remaining Utods kept the technological knowledge and use it to travel to and colonize other hospitable planets.

The humans run across a pod of Utods in their temporary wallow on a planet they are both exploring. When the Utods say something to the humans (their language sounds like high pitched squeaks and screams and comes from all their orifices), they shoot all but two of the group. A scientist on board on the ship makes them capture the remaining Utods for study instead of shooting them. But are they intelligent?

All the shit really makes it hard for the humans to see the Utods as anything less than animals. All the cleanliness makes it really hard for the Utods to see the humans as an intelligent, thinking race. Both groups are at a standstill and while they have a lot of philosophical discussions about what "intelligent life" really is, neither race really makes a breakthrough.

Another precis: 

The Utods are multi-headed multi-limbed hippo-like mud-wallowing creatures which alternate genders.  They live with their lizard-like parasites in large mud and feces filled ponds which they wallow in and philosophize.  They journey between their planets in seedpod spaceships filled with their own filth.  They feel no pain, are pacifists, and are happy.

Some humans encounter a bunch of them and their seedpod spaceship....  The humans of this future time live in ultra-hygienic conditions eating their synthesized foods and drinking non-alcoholic beverages.... The  complete inability of the humans to communicate with the aliens (who have chosen not to communicate) introduces the main theme of the work:  the humans are so repulsed by the filth of the Utods that they are forced to reevaluate the meaning and criteria of the words/concepts sentience, intelligence, civilization, progress — not only as applied to the aliens but ourselves.  Does our conception of civilization completely exclude all other forms civilization might take?

Here's Aldiss's own gloss: 

A novel written in anger following inhumane experiments on dolphins. Space-going men and women find an alien race, the utods, on a planet alien to both parties. The utods enrich their lives and bodies by wallowing in their own droppings, a ceremony incompatible with terrestrial preconceptions: according to the latter “civilisation is reckoned as the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta”. Result: disaster. A serio-comic novel with diverse multi-national characters exemplifying human madness.

It all reminds me a bit of Bataille and the idea that higher mental faculties are built on, or over, lower bodily ones - the secret proximity of elevation and abjection, the lofty and base materialism.   

Soul and arse. 

Noticeable that none of the covers of these editions attempt to pictorialise the Utods or the defecatory concept - the images are completely unrelated. The original Faber and Faber cover below, the designer makes no attempt at all