Shaming, the Devil

I am often struck by the way that feeding people becomes an exercise in shaming. It’s a common saying in shame studies that “shame is about being,” in that shame attaches to who you are, or what kind of person you are -- or are perceived as being by others. Shameful people are those who lack in dignity and worth, are not deserving of respectful treatment, and should not be allowed to hold their heads up high in public. The extreme case of this is that people who are shameful are not worthy of being part of society and therefore should not receive the rights and benefit of protection by society. 

What Reps. Kingston and Gingrich is advocating here is that only the right kind of people deserve to eat; that is, anyone who has “paid” for a meal either through money or service is worthy of being fed. And that somehow, receiving a meal without paying for it in some way will make you a deficient person who lacks the strong work ethic that will makes one a productive member of a capitalist society. 

It isn’t quite a shaming punishment that some legal minds advocate for, but the results are the same; it is a pre-emptive discipline aimed both at making restitution for taking something you don’t deserve (free food) and changing your moral character and spirit. I.e., they’re trying to shame poor kids into being the right kind of people. And it’s a clear example of how shaming operates in public policy. 

And other articles that demonstrate shaming living out there on the Internets.

 in this one, Miya Tokumitsu talks about how the idea of “doing what you love” is a way of subtly denying any respect to people who work in service industries. Because they’re not working a job they’re “passionate” about, then they aren’t doing “real” work. But the article also goes into the more insidious side of the “doing what you love” advice -- not only does this idea give employers the justification to demand emotional labor, or a requirement that you emotionally perform to specifications in your job, but by emphasizing that you’re doing what you love, an employer can skimp on wages and benefits, and demand additional work from an employee, because after all, “they’re doing what they love.”

Other articles on the Internet that highlight shame or shaming:

 Racism Made Me Who I Am Today (via Racialicious) -- “Some people act like being called a racist is the worst thing in the world that can happen to them. When will they understand that living everyday of your life with racism is far worse? When POC talk about racism, the response should never be “But I’m not a racist!” or “It’s not always about race.” It should be “Yes, I recognize that we live in a world with systemic racism.” And instead of shutting down a conversation, you grow it, you learn from it, you try to become the advocate and the ally we need. We need to keep talking. So that maybe my future timeline, and those of my children, won’t be marked by racism anymore.”

Empathy Won’t Save Us In the Fight Against Oppression. Here’s Why (via Black Girl Dangerous) -- “Relying on empathy almost always places the onus on the marginalized. They must reiterate how they are – and then be – much more like those who are not marginalized in order for their causes to matter. They must prove their pain in a way that their oppressors are willing to acknowledge. Sam Dubose’s head must be blown off publicly and violently, and those who desperately want to be on the officer’s side must judge his action to be one of unequivocal cruelty.”

Interrupting Bernie: Exposing the White Supremacy of the American Left (via Change From Within) -- “How much more committed to a “negative peace” can we get than literally shouting down the memory of a Black youth whose murder helped to spark this movement?And how much more “devoted to ‘order'” can we be than to lecture Black people about what direct actions are and are not “hurting your cause”? (Notably, this language I’ve seen from countless White folks shows that we do not see the cause of racial justice as OUR cause – it’s that cause over there that we will tolerate so long as it doesn’t disrupt our Bernie rally.)”

What is shame and where does it come from? Is it biological, social, psychological, political or something we don’t even know yet? These are all questions that dog at the heels of my research, which makes Blush: Faces of Shame by Elspeth Probyn a good start for my research. 

Shame is not quite theory, not quite reflection, but an approachable hybrid of both as Probyn works out what shame is and why shame is important. And that’s her thesis -- that shame is important, and to lose shame, either by ignoring it OR making it into more than it really is, can cost us something of what it means to be a human being. 

This is a common citation in most shame reading I come across, that there is something about shame that points toward what it is that makes us human beings. Typically, that finger probes into our messy, wounded vulnerability, challenging the ideals of Western philosophy that make the autonomous, individual, whole, hale and hearty speaking Man (and specifically that -- Man) the representative of the human species. To be human is to be fragile, to be powerless, to be relational, to need others as much as we need ourselves. 

And yet while that’s a somewhat better definition, I wonder, too, if it’s too limiting a way to talk about shame. Must shame always be THE defining mark of the human? Or A mark? Perhaps it’s less of a defining mark as it is something that tells us about who we are AS human beings. This is where I find Probyn to be helpful. 

Probyn relies heavily on the work of Silvan Tomkins, an affect researcher from the mid-20th century whose work came back into vogue in the 90s and early 2000s when queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick edited a new volume of his work. For Tomkins, shame in an indicator of interest that has not fully diminished, or as he puts it “The incomplete reduction of interest or joy.” Now, what the hell does that mean? It means that we experience shame when we are interested in something or someone (usually someone) and that interest gets disrupted, but not obliterated.

For example: You’re in a bar and you see a person that you find really attractive. You catch their eye. You smile, in a little flirty way. Maybe you wink. Instead of returning your flirtatious gaze, that person sneers a little and turns away. You blush and feel a little humiliated. Because your interest (the flirting) is interrupted (the sneer) but the person’s still there and you’re still there and apparently there’s not enough tequila in the world to fix this moment right now (not diminished). 

If you could just put the sneering jerk out of your head, or weren’t really invested in them to begin with, then there’s no shame. But because you can’t and you were -- bam, there’s that blush. Where Probyn sees that as hopeful is that shame indicates that there is a connection, and it isn’r broken just yet. Or as Probyn writes: 

“Shame illuminates our intenstive attachments to the world, our desire to be connected with others, and the knowledge that, as merely humans, we will sometimes fail in our attempts to maintain those connections” (14). 

And here’s the rub -- shame exists in that space of potentiality, in that the connection could be eliminated -- or regained. As long as shame is there, that’s the possibility. 

But wait, you might say -- I don’t even like that jerk! Nuts to them!

Except that you kinda do, shame replies. And that’s the other point that Probyn is making in the first chapter, as she wrestles with the question of whither cometh shame, the heart or the head (or the community or outer space)? Robyn is making the case that shame is biological, in that human beings tend to be wired up to experience shame, even before they are taught what to be ashamed about. I recall that Tomkins writes that shame occurs early on in infants, who blush and cry whenever their mothers fail to respond to their interested gaze. Shame seems to be part of the human hardware; what we’re ashamed about is social, psychological, political software. But because its hardware, hard-wired into our bodies and brains and informing both, shame plays an interesting role. Shame acts on the body physically, making us feel shame even before we can articulate what it is we feel shame about. This means that shame informs us about our interests -- even before we know them. Shame is the body’s way of registering interest, even when we don’t know what it is we’re interested in, even when we’re unaware that we actually want connection. Or as Probyn writes:

“In shame, the feeling and minding and thinking and social body comes alive. It’s in this sense that shame is positive and productive, even when it feels bad. The feelings of shame teaches us about our relations to others. Shame makes us feel proximity differently, understood as the body’s relation to itself, the self to its self, and comprehended within a sphere that is human and nonhuman, universal and particular, specific and general.” (34-35) 

About 8 years ago or so, I started getting interested in shame.

I was taking a class on theological methods and randomly read two books -- The Colonization of Psychic Space by Kelly Oliver, and Saving Shame by Virginia Burrus -- that described shame and talked about its role in breaking people down, but also its role in building people -- and communities -- up. It might have ended right there, except this idea about shame kept nagging at me. And I really didn’t know why. 

Now, after a lot of readings, a lot of doctoral studies and a lot of therapy, I’ve come to realize that my interest in shame has come from a twofold place -- all the shame and shaming I’ve experience in my life, and the utter silence we have in the broader U.S. society about shame. Shame is communally dealt out in super-size quantities, but on a whole shame is an individual meal that gets choked down in silence. Shame is borne and endured without speaking of it. And yet, there tends to be a recognition that shame is something that everyone is grappling with and no one understands. 

“That’s great!” people say when I tell them I’m writing a dissertation about shame. “That’s fascinating! I’m so glad you’re doing this work!”

Which is usually followed up by the comment: “We just don’t have enough shame in our society.”

And what they mean by that is, they see young people flaunting their sexuality, young people expressing themselves through their clothes, piercings and tattoos, and young people cursing or talking freely about things that used to be kept on the down low in their day. What they mean is that they hope I will find a way to make people behave within the societal behavior parameters that shame was used to police. 

Much rarer, I get the comment: “Good. Because I realize that I have all this shame in my life, and I don’t know how to talk about it. And it’s killing me. It’s killing us as a society.”

And that’s the why of this project. How do we talk about shame? What is it? How does it function? How can we articulate what we feel when we experience shame? Is shame good or bad, confining or transformative? More importantly -- How can we learn to recognize shame when we see it? How is shame used as a political, social and economic tool to manipulate behaviors and societal transformation? How can we recognize our own shame versus shame that is imposed upon us? And why does this make a difference?