Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Shame: Methods, Theories, Norms, Cultures, and Politics

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Shame is one of the most stigmatized and stigmatizing of emotions. Often characterized as an emotion in which the subject holds a global, negative self-assessment, shame is typically understood to mark the subject as being inadequate in some way, and a sizable amount of work on shame focuses on its problematic or unhealthy aspects, effects, or consequences. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Shame reorients readers to a more balanced understanding of what shame is, as well as its value and social function. The contributors recognize shame as a complex, richly layered, conscious or unconscious phenomenon, and the collection offers an understanding of how theories of shame can help or hinder us in understanding ourselves, others, and the world around us. It also highlights how a diverse range of perspectives on shame can enlighten our understanding of both the positive and negative aspects of this powerful emotion. Edited by Cecilea Mun, these chapters by an international group of scholars reflect a broad range of methods, disciplinary perspectives, and both theoretical and practical concerns regarding shame.

Reviews

Mun (philosophy, Arizona State Univ.) has assembled a fine collection of essays on the "methods, theories, norms, cultures, and politics" of shame. Shame often receives critical attention as a negative emotion, but this collection of ten essays offers a balanced view of the emotion, paying attention to its positive social functions and its value as a tool for negotiating one's relationship to the world. Shame has both positive and negative features, and this combination is precisely what renders it such a powerful emotion on individual and social levels of enactment. Examining the phenomenon of shame across disciplines, cultures, and texts, the contributors look at the complexity of shame as a response to self, others, and the world. Essays treat the science and philosophy of shame and its social and political functions in social media, literature, and queer culture. Offering an excellent introduction to and integration of analyses of shame to date, this volume will appeal to students, practitioners, and scholars with disciplinary interests as varied as literature, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and psychotherapy. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

* CHOICE *
According to many psychologists and philosophers, shame is a painful emotion of the vulnerable self, an ugly and negative feeling and a destructive and pathological state of the mind. By breaking and softening the boundaries of academic disciplines and adopting integrative viewpoints, however, Cecilea Mun and the authors of this volume carefully develop inclusive and holistic interpretations of shame to demonstrate that shame is more than a negative and self-critical emotion with depressive feeling and reactive attitude. In their chapters, they argue convincingly that shame is the unique and powerful human experience of self-consciousness, interpersonal relation, norm, culture, politics, body, ontology, phenomenology, and rationality. This volume provides much-needed multidimensional analysis of shame and expands the horizon of how we study and understand shame with an insightful and stimulating collection of essays, a valuable contribution to the interdisciplinary study of shame that both scholars and students can benefit from. -- Bongrae Seok, Alvernia University
An excellent collection of interdisciplinary theorizing and insight about shame. From Nietzsche to post-apartheid South Africa, From Neoliberalism to Queer Theory. A perfect range of suggestive opinions for the engaged researcher. -- David Nash

Author Bio

Cecilea Mun received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Arizona State University.