Shame is possibly one of the human feelings that fascinates me the most. For its multidimensionality, the access it gives to universes of paradoxical meanings and for its omnipresence in the sphere of current public debates. It seems to me that I see its trace so often, both in its frank manifestation and in the defensive mechanics under which we guess it.
Let’s call it “narcissistic”, this mechanism, without however reducing it to an appellation which, because of an annoying tendency to reduce everything to psychiatric diagnosis, releases an aura of bad news. In a more open way of thinking, narcissism is not a disease, but an ultra-complex system, personal to each individual, which consists in protecting, in a more or less flexible way, something like his feeling of value.
It covers an evolutionary continuum from the most radical reactions of domination to the more refined small manifestations of the “ego”. The smaller we are then, the more narcissistic we are, one could say roughly, thus pointing as much to the smallness of age as that of the mind. Narcissism is modulated, among other things, according to maturity, the ability to be authentic with others, but also to tolerate shame instead of defending oneself against it reactively.
The more shame threatens the entire integrity of an individual, the more the latter will be likely to seek to cut himself off from it by using more radical mechanisms, the projection at the top of the list: “It’s not me, it’s the others,” as the song goes.
I see shame everywhere because I also perceive it in those who try to emancipate themselves from it, with good reason, because there is the shame of being oneself that comes through socialization, through the norms that dictate what whether it is acceptable or not to be. This shame, social, is deposited on those who go beyond the framework, who think in reverse of the majority, who try to deconstruct these categories which put things and people in the same type of boxes.
This shame is that associated with what the philosopher Miranda Fricker called “epistemic injustices”, designating all these injustices committed against people who are immediately discredited because they belong to a category of people that we do not consider themselves capable of “producing knowledge” in a given discursive context. The concept, developed in 2007, serves to shed light on all those times when we do not take into account someone’s testimony, the simple fact that he or she belongs to a particular social category.
Anyone who has found themselves in a position of vulnerability in a care, justice, social service or other institution has possibly already experienced or witnessed an epistemic injustice, since they are common. They are articulated from very human reflexes, those which consist in classifying information by favoring those which do not destabilize us, of course, but above all, those which never make us feel ashamed.
Because there is also the shame that we feel when we realize that we are participating in these injustices. It’s the one that makes the most noise on certain radio stations, whose ultimate goal seems to be to reassure people that they don’t have to be ashamed of perpetuating social inequalities, that ” it’s not them, it’s the others”.
Smallness, we said.
I am often ashamed. Not that I struggle with a Judeo-Christian guilt complex or a tendency to self-flagellation. I’m ashamed when I become aware of a world very close to mine, which I didn’t know because I was too busy maintaining meaning in my daily life. So I often have a shame that I would call “privilege,” which is the source of many of my indignations, too. This shame does not reduce me, on the contrary, it is the continual starting point for the widening of my horizon of thought.
I’m ashamed like when I get a cold shower, first like something that makes me want to run further to avoid it, then, like something that grabs me, as long as I don’t stay frozen under it . This shame is often the beginning of something beautiful, because it leads me to another. It makes us aware that we are part of a world in which so many people are suffering, right next to it. Obviously, we cannot be constantly ashamed of being where we are, of being who we are, but that is not what it is often about. It’s not so much about losing privileges as simply giving them to others.
I am privileged. Yes, I say so by fully assuming the meaning of the word in both its literary and sociological dimensions, only being grateful and cautious at the same time. I am privileged in the fact that my situation in life stems from a series of chances, some of which can be reversed at any moment, others which are more immutable. It doesn’t reduce me in any way. It is only a small supplement of consciousness.
I also have a privilege, this one much rarer for people of my type: I have never been raped. I won’t go any further here, just hinting at how ashamed I would be to speak for a sexually assaulted person, telling them what they should have done in a situation that I did not experience. And even if I had lived it, I would also be ashamed to claim that everyone should react like me, in a similar situation.
If this “little embarrassment”, this sweet shame of privilege had been felt by more people on the airwaves this week, there would have been less ratings, certainly, but less epistemic injustices above all.
It could have been the start of something beautiful.