“Shame at being human” as a transformative political concept and praxis: Pedagogical possibilities

Abstract

Feminist theorizations have recovered the ethical and political value of shame, suggesting that shame operates not only as a mechanism of normalization and social exclusion but also as a primary affect of intersubjective life. This paper argues that this theorization can be enriched by putting into conversation Agamben’s and Deleuze’s interactions with Primo Levi on shame as an ambivalent affect. What is shameful, for both Deleuze and Agamben, is not simply the sense of being judged by others as unworthy, unwanted, or wrong, but rather the awareness of one’s complicity in Others’ suffering. This essay explores the pedagogical openings of shame as the inability of the self to respond to Others’ suffering. The paper concludes by suggesting that certain experiences of shame can be transformative in that they create pedagogical possibilities that could subvert negative referents of shame. What the author terms critical pedagogies of shame pay explicit attention to the affective complexities of the narratives of oppression and suffering that enter the classroom and interrogate in particular the trappings of normative narratives of shame.