Shame Now: Ruth Leys Diagnoses the New Queer Shame Culture

Abstract

SHAME NOW: RUTH LEYS DIAGNOSES THE NEW QUEER SHAME CULTURE J. Keith Vincent From Guilt to Shame: Auschwitz After by Ruth Leys. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. Pp. 216. $25.95 paper.In From Guilt to Shame, Ruth Leys follows up on her earlier work on genealogy of trauma studies by tracing emergence eventual discrediting of theories of survival guilt since end of World War II.1 In process, she tells a fascinating story of a gradual shift in trauma studies away psychodynamic theories that emphasized subject's uncontrollable mimetic identification with aggressor towards anti-psychoanalytic understandings of purely external stressors traumatic images as causes of trauma. In book's latter chapters, however, focus shifts to a critique of recent work in affect theory, including a highly problematic reading of work of late queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Leys interprets work of Sedgwick and her followers not only as a further development of anti-psychoanalytic tendencies that have conspired to discredit diagnosis of survivor guilt, but also as symptomatic of a larger, culturewide shift from guilt to shame, away questions of agency responsibility towards what she misleadingly characterizes as a disengaged solipsistic focus on identity. Since publication of this book in 2007, Leys has continued to mount similar critiques, both of Sedgwick's work of whole enterprise of shame-based affect theory. This review attempts to address that critique as it appears both in From Guilt to Shame in an interview article that have appeared in interim.2First I should make it clear that Leys's book does provide an impassioned, I would say important, defense of what she calls mimetic school of trauma theory. In this way of thinking, traumatic experiences are marked exacerbated by uncontrollable identification merging with others, sometimes even aggressor responsible for causing trauma. The founding instability of subject that this reflects is one of most fundamental tenets of psychoanalysis, so it is easy to understand why Leys, as a thinker with a strong psychoanalytic bent, might be critical of attempt to replace it with antimimetic theories like that of Terrence Des Pres others for whom cause of trauma is understood as entirely external to subject un contaminated by any mimetic, fictive, or fantasmatic dimension (15). The importance of survivor guilt to Leys has to do with fact that we experience it over actions that occur only numerically in fantasy (like our murderous wish that someone else would die in our place), so it serves as a sort of proof of mimetic theory of trauma. As she puts it, [T]he concept of survivor guilt is inseparable notion of subject's unconscious identification with other (10). Our ability to feel guilt over crimes we have not actually committed is a sign of permeability of subject its vulnerability to immersive mi- metic identification sway of fantasy. Another way of saying this would be that notion of survivor guilt is incomprehensible without a psychoanalytic under- standing of subjectivity. So de- nial of survivor guilt is tantamount to repudiation of psychoanaly- sis. One goal of Leys's then, is to remind us of psychoanalytic insight that we can think desire things in our unconscious that we would find morally repugnant in our waking lives, but that this does not necessarily make us complicit with evil.In chapter 4, however, which she describes as arguably heart of my book, Leys moves into more problematic territory. Here the theme of trauma . . . recedes, she draws a connection between antimimetic critiques of survi- vor guilt contemporary shame theory, which she sees as having taken place of survivor guilt, replacing its intentionalist para- digm with an anti-intentionalist material one (16). …