Shame: The Effects of Affect

Elspeth Probyn. Blush: Faces of Shame, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005.

Reviewed by Alix Winter

Shame is shameful. Which is why most people prefer not to talk of shame too much. Steven Connor writes that ‘shame is bottomless, there is far too much ever to tell of it, and so it holds its tongue.’ Elspeth Probyn in Blush: Faces of Shame is compelled to speak of shame; it has, she says, got under her skin. Where pride has been an important feature of the new social movements, Probyn examines shame (the limits of pride), and argues for its potentially productive effects. Tracing some of the manifestations (faces) of shame, personal and collective, Probyn suggests that shame can compel an examination of the causes of shame. This re-examination may instigate a reappraisal of actions, our selves and, ideally, of our politics. In these ways, shame is productive.

The productive role of shame is, for Probyn, a consequence of its deeply human qualities, and its association with the spark or desire that signals interest. That is, we can only feel shame when we are interested in something or someone, and our interest is shunned. I am, for example, ashamed when I approach someone I have met before, whom I admire, and they do not recognise me. The link between shame and interest, drawn from the work of psychologist Sylvan Tomkins, is the common denominator that links the different faces of shame explored in this book: the shame of being out of place; the politics of shame and shaming; the shame of the past; shame and writing; shame and bodies. Shame is a result of proximity between people that reveals how we ‘embody the social’ (27).

Theoretically, Blush: Faces of Shame brings together sociology, theories of affect and emotion, cultural studies and psychological theories of shame. Blush is positioned as a meditation on shame, pursuing lines of enquiry across theory, literature and cultural moments. It implicitly uses a feminist methodology, drawing on personal narrative which is a starting point for an exploration of the political and social ramifications of shame. In disciplinary terms, shame is drawn upon to question the biological/social divide between the sciences and humanities, specifically to rethink the role of the feeling, blushing body as capable of shaking up categories of the social and physiological. Probyn explores the capacity of shame to disturb both personal habitus and politics. At its most powerful, shame provokes a revaluation of the self, and incites a will to know that is political in its effects. For example, the white shame associated with Aboriginal dispossession in Australia may trigger learning about the effects of land loss, debate and discussion that in turn engenders political change. The potential inherent in shame lies in its affective qualities which entail a biological commonality, while its anaclitic emotional qualities mean that shame is deeply personal and social, differing across cultures. Both the physiological commonality, as well as the emotional and personal components of shame can be mobilised to investigate and change the social.

Studies of shame have largely been associated with psychology and anthropology, while feminism has analysed the gendering of emotion. Recent feminist studies of affect, including Elspeth Probyn, Sara Ahmed and Teresa Brennan, are a rethinking of the intersections of the social body, the biological body and politics. Where much previous work on bodies has emphasised cultural and linguistic constructs (Judith Butler, Susan Bordo), or desire and desiring bodies (psychoanalysis, queer), feminist considerations of affect revisit the biological body’s interface with the social. Blush extends Probyn’s academic interest in the interstices of theory, surfaces and the social (Sexy Bodies, Outside Belongings), and the sensitive interface between the body/self and otherness (‘Eating Skin Well’). Unlike these previous works, however, Probyn draws on psychology and psychoanalysis, which compels a recognition of the normative roles of shame. More broadly, the rethinking of the social/biological body through the lens of emotion and affect flag a new theoretical domain for feminist cultural studies.

Though the scope of Blush is wide, place, bodies and the shame of being out of place are recurring tropes. In particular, white shame about a colonial history is a form of being out of place in an Australian context. Probyn suggests that the public manifestations of shame that accompanied the ‘Bringing Them Home’ report on the Stolen Generations, experienced both personally and collectively, ‘allowed for knowledge to circulate, softened by the affective cloaking of shared emotions’ (99). As such, shame keeps issues alive. In her consideration of ancestral shame, in which individual shame is connected more broadly with history, namely colonialism, Probyn argues that shame is not only passed down through history, but through generations. This ancestral shame necessarily entails an affective and emotional inter-relation of the oppressor and the oppressed. Shame becomes a form of ‘contact zone’ and holds the potential for an exploration of new ways of connecting, and a new form of proximity.

Probyn’s explorations of the possibilities of shame for self and social re-evaluation are compelling. There is, however, a powerful component of shame that perpetuates the status quo. While Blush explicitly wants to consider the productive role of shame, there is also a need to examine the politics of shame in maintaining hegemonic models of gender and sexuality, among others. As Probyn acknowledges, mobilising shame for positive political outcome is challenge—the shift from personal shame to the collective entails a different way of making shame work productively. The challenge is to draw on shame to find ‘a more affecting way of engaging in politics’ (106). At best, a collective shame provokes a desire to learn more, to engage in debate and discussion. Not everyone, however, will be goaded into action by shame. I am therefore cautious about shame’s transformative potential when shame is still mobilised in normative ways. The challenge of the revaluation of shame is in ensuring these positive political outcomes: how do we mobilise shame so that it does not simply entail personal transformation (in keeping with current narratives of self improvement), but personal, social and political transformation? The absence of a consideration of shame in relation to gay and lesbian politics in this book is surprising. While Probyn does not wish to interrogate pride, it seems that the politics of pride involve a shake up of the self and the social that has its origins in shame, and that this could be instructive for the political and transformative capacity of shame more generally. More broadly, I wonder at the resurgence of the affective body in a highly mediated, bureaucratised society. Is the affective body a locus of ‘truth’ in postmodernity, or another symptom?

Probyn is highly readable and this reconsideration of shame is provocative. Probyn positions Blush as one response to the challenge of thinking shame. Further challenges include a consideration of the reasons why shame and affect more broadly are becoming sites of political intervention.

Alexandra Winter did her PhD thesis on skin in the School of EMSAH at The University of Queensland, St Lucia. Alexandra has taught in EMSAH and also in the Contemporary Studies programme at the Ipswich campus. She is currently a research fellow at Eidos, a cross-institutional research centre.