Scott Herring is not a hoarder. He watches shows like Hoarders with the same appalled fascination as the rest of us. But Herring is also an English professor who specializes in American cultural studies, which means it’s his job to think about why shows like Hoarders appall and fascinate Americans to the degree that they do, and how hoarding has become transformed in the eyes of the public from an eccentricity to a mental disorder. His 2014 book The Hoarders: Material Deviance in Modern American Culture, which he’ll discuss this weekend at the Chicago Humanities Spring Festival, is a history not of hoarding, but of other people’s reactions to hoarders.
On TV, many of the hoarders don’t think of themselves as hoarders at all. They consider themselves extreme collectors. “Then professional organizers and psychologists will impose the diagnosis upon them,” Herring says. “It’s interesting to watch them negotiate the diagnosis.” In the book Herring describes one particular episode of Hoarders where a woman named Jill views an old and rotten pumpkin not as garbage but as the source of some very interesting seeds and remains immune to her therapist’s attempts to convince her she has a problem.
“Hoarders” Sat 4/29, 10 AM, Feinberg Theatre, 610 S. Michigan, 312-494-9509, chicagohumanities.org, $15, $10 students and teachers.
