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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

Agamben: shame « Previous | |Next »
April 12, 2006

Auschwitz creates a whole new set of relationships between concepts and in doing so serves to disrupt the settled relations of the pre-Auschwitz world---and later the post-Auschwitz world.

For Agamben, in Remnants of Auschwitz, the new ethical terrain after Aschwitz is marked by shame, to making oneself passive and being consigned to passivity. We are the subjects of our desubjectification. Shame is what is produced in self-loss--to the subject becoming a witness to its oblivion as subject.

Some argue that shame (and disgust) offer an unreliable guide to ethical conduct behavior as it risk calling up mere prejudice and social stigma and signifies a desire to hide from our humanity. Martha C Nussbaum says:

My general thesis will be that shame and disgust are different from anger and fear, in the sense that they are especially likely to be normatively distorted, and thus unreliable as guides to public practice, because of features of their specific internal structure. Anger is a reasonable type of emotion to have, in a world where it is reasonable to care deeply about things that can be damaged by others. The question about any given instance of anger must then be, are the facts correct and are the values balanced?

She says that shame that there is much more to be said about shame's positive role in development and social life, in connection with valuable ideals and aspirations. Thus my story about shame will ultimately be quite complex, and will involve distinguishing different varieties of shame, some more and some less reliable.

I shall argue that what I shall call "primitive shame"--a shame closely connected to an infantile demand for omnipotence and the unwillingness to accept neediness--is, like disgust, a way of hiding from our humanity that is both irrational in the normative sense, embodying a wish to be a type of creature one is not, and unreliable in the practical sense, frequently bound up with narcissism and an unwillingness to recognize the rights and needs of others. Even though this sort of shame can be in many ways transcended, such favorable outcomes do not always take place. Moreover, all human beings very likely carry a good deal of primitive shame around with them, even after they in some ways transcend it. For this reason, and other reasons I shall offer, shame is likely to be normatively unreliable in public life, despite its potential for good. I shall then argue that a liberal society has particular reasons to inhibit shame and to protect its citizens from shaming.
| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:56 PM | | Comments (0)
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