Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-t5pn6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T06:17:20.001Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Shame of Shamelessness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Gail Weiss
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An important question that is often raised, whether directly or indirectly, in philosophical discussions of shame‐inducing behavior concerns whether the experience of shame has unique moral value. Despite the fact that shame is strongly associated with negative affective responses, many people have argued that the experience of being ashamed plays an important motivating role, rather than being an obstacle, in living a moral life. These discussions, however, tend to take for granted two interrelated assumptions that I will be problematizing: 1) that the subject's shame is warranted; 2) that the shame is directly attributable to the subject's own actions. I challenge these assumptions by turning to a phenomenon I call secondhand shame, namely, shame that is induced by another person's shameless behavior. This essay examines the gender and racial dynamics that so frequently intensify secondhand shame, and suggests that this troubling phenomenon, when shared as a group experience, can be morally transformative, particularly when it leads to unified public resistance to shameless conduct.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 33 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Gender and the Politics of Shame , Summer 2018 , pp. 537 - 552
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alcoff, Linda Martín. 2006. Visible identities: Race, gender, and the self. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartky, Sandra Lee. 1990. Femininity and domination: Studies in the phenomenology of oppression. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Beauvoir, Simone de. 2010. The second sex. Trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany‐Chevallier. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex”. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment, 2d edition. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dolezal, Luna. 2015. The body and shame: Phenomenology, feminism, and the socially shaped body. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Fahrenthold, David. 2016. Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005. The Washington Post, October 8. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-having-extremely-lewd-conversation-about-women-in-2005/2016/10/07/3b9ce776-8cb4-11e6-bf8a-3d26847eeed4_story.html?utm_term=.e685edebcc0e (accessed February 8, 2017).Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. 2008. Black skin, white masks. Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press.Google Scholar
Farrell, Amy Erdman. 2011. Fat shame: Stigma and the fat body in American culture. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Garland‐Thomson, Rosemarie. 1997. Extraordinary bodies: Figuring physical disability in American culture and literature. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Halperin, David M. 2009. Why gay shame now? In Gay shame, ed. Halperin, David M. and Traub, Valerie. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Halperin, David M., and Traub, Valerie, eds. 2009. Gay shame. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
The Indian Express. 2017. America first, but who is second? European nations troll Donald Trump using spoof videos. February 5. indianexpress.com/article/world/america-first-but-who-is-second-european-nations-troll-donald-trump-using-spoof-videos-4508890/ (accessed March 1, 2017).Google Scholar
Johnson, Erica L., and Moran, Pat, eds. 2013. The female face of shame. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques. 1977. The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I. In Écrits: A selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.Google Scholar
Lorde, Audre. 1990. Age, race, class, and sex: Women redefining difference. In Out there: Marginalization and contemporary cultures, ed. Ferguson, Russell, Gever, Martha, Minh‐ha, Trinh T., and West, Cornel. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Mendible, Myra. 2016. American shame and the boundaries of belonging. In American shame: Stigma and the body politic, ed. Mendible, Myra. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
McRuer, Robert. 2006. Crip theory: Cultural signs of queerness and disability. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Murphy, Robert. 1990. The body silent. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Proust, Marcel. 2003. The prisoner and the fugitive. In search of lost time, vol. 5, ed. Prendergast, Christopher. Trans. Carol Clark and Peter Collier. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Sartre, Jean‐Paul. 1984. Being and nothingness. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, and Frank, Adam. 1995. Shame in the cybernetic fold: Reading Sylvan Tomkins. In Shame and its sisters: The Sylvan Tomkins reader, ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Frank. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Tomkins, Sylvan. 1995. Shame and its sisters: The Sylvan Tomkins reader, ed. Kosofsky Sedgwick, Eve and Frank, Adam. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Tomkins, Sylvan. 2008. Affect, imagery, consciousness: The complete edition. New York: Springer Publishing Company.Google Scholar