There are five chapters to Elspeth
Probyn’s Blush. In the first chapter, "Doing Shame",
the reader is introduced to the subject of shame through a number of examples
emphasising the embodiment of shame. The bulk of the chapter, however, presents
a particular psychological view of shame, namely the view developed in the
1950s and 1960s by psychologist Silvan Tomkins. One important claim of this
chapter is that the social and human scientist’s "emotion" and the
biologist’s "affect" are not exclusive notions. The affect-emotion
divide should be bridged; only then can shame be more fully apprehended.

In the second chapter, "Shame,
Bodies, Places", by recounting an episode from her personal life, the
author illustrates "how the physiological experience of shame intersects
with the physicality of place. The color, the place, the history of bodies all
come alive in shame." (40) To sustain this claim, Probyn appeals to Pierre
Bourdieu’s habitus, a notion according to which "agents are corporeally
informed by their social positions", and "our bodies continually
speak of their pasts in everyday actions–gestures, manners, and small ways of
being and inhabiting social space." (49) Against Bourdieu, however, Probyn
thinks that habitus is not merely a determining and deterministic force. In
particular, "Through feeling shame, the body inaugurates an alternative
way of being in the world. Shame, as the body’s reflection on itself, may
reorder the composition of the habitus, which in turn may allow for quite
different choices." (56).

In the third chapter, "The
Shamer and the Shamed", the author moves on from shame in the body to
shame in the body politic. In fact, at this point, though the reader is not
warned, a subtle but important shift in the topic at hand occurs: the focus is
no longer simply shame, whether individually felt or in the body politic, but also
the practice of shaming. Probyn discusses the positive or negative
nature of such a practice both within the law and in the public domain at
large. She focuses more in particular on a critique of feminism as a shamer or
shaming movement. Though much more cautious then those reached in Chapter 2,
her conclusions concerning the role of shame for the body politic seem, all
things considered, positive.

In the fourth chapter, "Ancestral
Shame", the author considers how we are related to shame in the past. The
idea is to explore the effect of shame over generations. "Ancestral shame
reminds us of how we are forged in many different relations–those of kin but
also those of geography and history. These different proximities produce very
particular emotional responses and affective identities, which are
transgenerational as well as intercultural." (107) This idea is explored
through a discussion of "Half Breed", a poem written by the author’s
grandmother.

In the final chapter, "Writing
Shame", Probyn explores the shame-based ethics of writing and argues that
a form of shame always attends the writer. Primarily it is the shame of not
being equal to the interest of one’s subject. Drawing from examples taken from
a range of writers–Stephen King, Gilles Deleuze, and Primo Levi–she
elaborates on the different ways they tell us about the seriousness of writing,
how writing shame radically rearrange bodies, and the precision and passion
that constitute honest writing. The main claim, here, is that sometimes
cultural theory gets carried away, forgetting that theories and theoretical
writing are of interest for what they can do, what they let us understand, and
what they make us question.

In what follows I will comment on issues
concerning the psychology and politics of shame as treated by Probyn. Readers
who are up to date with the psychological literature on shame would have liked
to see how Tomkins’s views on shame would fare in the light of the immense
amount of empirical research that has been conducted on the topic. Since the
1960s, the psychology and neuropsychology of shame and the emotions in general
has made a lot of progress (see for example J. P. Tangney’s and R. Dearing’s Shame
and Guilt. New York: Guilford Press, 2002). What is more, Tomkins’ view are
not even argued for but simply presented by the author. This is unfortunate as
much of the substantial conclusions of chapters two and three on the positive
nature of shame seem to rely precisely on this particular view of shame.

Another point is connected to this
one and concerns the positive nature of shame. Shame has traditionally been considered
both as a negative and as a positive emotion. This is possible for there are at
least ten different criteria to be found in the literature according to which
an emotion is labelled as either positive or negative. Many, for example, agree
that shame is negative with respect to its phenomenology while rather positive
with respect to its moral or prudential value. In chapter 1, Probyin does write
that shame is not positive insofar as it is a positive, good feeling (15).
Rather, it is positive insofar as the interest to which it is tied is "opposed
to a negative or substrative state: it adds rather than takes away. In line
with what Foucault would call positivity, shame is always productive. In this
sense, it produces effects–more shame, more interest–which may be felt at a
physiological social, or cultural level. When we feel shame it is because our
interest has been interfered with but not cancelled out. The body wants to
continue being interested, but something happens to "incompletely reduce"
that interest." (15) But what is so positive about producing effects? The
only way of understanding this kind of positivity is the arithmetic notion of
addition (which in fact is opposed to the subtraction mentioned in the quote).
But surely to qualify shame as positive in this way is rather odd.

In the last quote, however, besides
Foucault, Probyn is also referring to Tomkins who thought that shame only
operates after interest has been activated and operates exactly by inhibiting
such interest or by "incompletely reducing it". "Interest"
is a rather vague notion and Probyn does not tell us much about it (is it an
occurrence a disposition, an affect, a cognitive state?). Today, however, one
of the main theories of emotions, namely appraisal theory, makes a claim that
may be somewhat related to Tomkins’, namely, that occurring emotions can only
be understood as in relation to the individual’s concerns with his or her
well-being (on the nature of which the literature in question has something to
say). Even granting that we all knew exactly what was meant by "interest",
why think that reducing interest would be positive? Here Probyn may have
something else to say: "without interest there can be no shame;
conversely, shame alerts us to things, people, and ideas that we didn’t even
realize we wanted. It highlights unknown and unappreciated investments. Viewing
shame in this way must disabuse us of shame’s reputation as a miserabilitst
condition." (14) Actually, shame’s reputation is a mixed bag. Aristotle,
for one, talked both positively and negatively about it and the same type of
mixed judgements are to be found in the recent philosophical literature
(Manion, J. "The Moral Relevance of Shame." American Philosophical
Quarterly 19(1), 2002: 73-90; Tarnopolsky, C., "Prudes, Perverts and
Tyrants: Plato and the Contemporary Politics of Shame and Civility." Political
Theory, Vol. 32(4), (2004): 468-494). The real problem with the last
passage, however, is that many psychologists today would think that all
emotions, and not only shame, alert us to things, people and ideas we are
concerned with, whether we realize it or not. If this is a criterion for
positivity then all emotions would be positive; to qualify shame as positive
would then have no particular significance.

In chapter 3, Probyn discusses
shame and shaming without drawing a distinction between them which should be
always drawn out in order to avoid confusion. Consider the following passage:

Clearly what
emerges from the above discussion is that some uses of shame can close down all
possibilities for better social organization…It really depends on where you
think shame comes from and whether it is considered "bad" from the
outset. … if you think the shame response alerts us to the presence of
another and attunes us to our actions in the world, it’s hard to see why we
would want to get rid of it. However, if shame is construed only as a means of
reproach and becomes a way of wielding power under the guise of moral rectitude,
its uses are likely to be unpalatable. (94)

Metaphors aside, shame does not "come
from" anywhere outside one’s own self. However, the event that may elicit shame
may originate with another person or institution. This may be an event of shaming.
In chapter 3, Probyn rightly claims that whether shaming yields shame or not often
depends on the way the "shamed" conceives of the "shamer".
However, she does seem to think that if shaming yields anything at all then it
yields shame. Her metaphorical use of language blinds her to the possibility
that, when shaming does yield something, it may be something such as guilt
and/or remorse. In fact, as Harris, Walgrave, and Braithwaite (see "Emotional
Dynamics in Restorative Conferences." Theoretical Criminology
Vol.8(2), 2004: 191-210) have remarked, within criminal justice, shame and
guilt seem to occur as a single response. This conclusion is so important that
they go as far as wondering "whether there is any need to differentiate
between shame and guilt to understand the emotional impact of shaming in
criminal justice cases." (Harris, Walgrave, and Braithwaite, 193). At
various places in chapter 1 and 3, Probyn attempts to distinguish between shame
an guilt and insists that the object of her focus is shame and not guilt. Yet,
in line with the findings of Harris et al., she fails to keep the two
separate. At one point, for example, she mentions the offer of forgiveness as
an important part of shaming. (89) This claim is not in itself problematic. It
becomes so, however, when one insists that only shame is at play in shaming,
for offers of forgiveness are indeed typically associated with guilt rather
than shame.

I don’t think that philosophers with
a taste for argument and psychologists have much to learn from this book.
Whether this conclusion can be extended to the chapters more directly addressed
to cultural theory and hence to the book as a whole your reviewer cannot say.

 

© 2006 Raffaele Rodogno

 

Raffaele Rodogno, Ph.D., Lecturer
in Philosophy at the University of Geneva, Switzerland and Post-doctoral
Research Fellow at the Swiss National Center for the Affective Sciences.

Categories: Philosophical, Psychology