Unravelling the meaning of survivor shame

TY - CHAP

T1 - Unravelling the meaning of survivor shame

AU - Montes Sanchez, Alba

AU - Zahavi, Dan

PY - 2018/1/1

Y1 - 2018/1/1

N2 - In reading literature on mass atrocity, be it testimonies, academic studies, or artistic elaborations of those experiences, it is not uncommon to come across shame: confessions of it, descriptions of it, attempts to hide it, and so on. Typically, however, shame does not arise where one would expect to find it, and its meaning is far from straightforward. This alone makes it a relevant object of study for anyone investigating mass atrocity. Furthermore, shame is an emotion that has everything to do with self-identity, self-image, and group identification; it touches directly on issues of who I am and how the other sees me, as well as who we are and how others see us. As such, understanding shame and dealing with it are often crucial for a whole range of processes that take place in the aftermath of mass atrocity, from therapeutic assistance to the survivors to political rebuilding of societies and handling of collective memory, just to name a few. This task is made even more difficult by the fact that, as therapists know only too well, shame typically tries to hide itself: people who feel shame usually avoid talking about it and often deploy all kinds of psychological strategies to avoid even acknowledging it to themselves, so there is a real danger that shame dynamics may play hidden destructive roles without anyone being able to address them. For all these reasons, shame should be of interest to anyone investigating mass atrocity. As we will show in a moment, the topic of shame in relation to mass atrocity is very wide and has multiple facets and dimensions. In this chapter, we cannot address them all. We rather aim at throwing some light on the experiential and ethical aspects of one of the most baffling varieties of shame in the context of mass atrocity: survivor shame. We begin by discussing three subject positions (victim, bystander, and perpetrator) and explain why we focus on survivor shame. We then review and discuss the analyses of survivor shame offered by two influential authors, Giorgio Agamben and Ruth Leys. We subsequently move to our own account of survivor shame by contrasting it with related phenomena such as embarrassment and humiliation.

AB - In reading literature on mass atrocity, be it testimonies, academic studies, or artistic elaborations of those experiences, it is not uncommon to come across shame: confessions of it, descriptions of it, attempts to hide it, and so on. Typically, however, shame does not arise where one would expect to find it, and its meaning is far from straightforward. This alone makes it a relevant object of study for anyone investigating mass atrocity. Furthermore, shame is an emotion that has everything to do with self-identity, self-image, and group identification; it touches directly on issues of who I am and how the other sees me, as well as who we are and how others see us. As such, understanding shame and dealing with it are often crucial for a whole range of processes that take place in the aftermath of mass atrocity, from therapeutic assistance to the survivors to political rebuilding of societies and handling of collective memory, just to name a few. This task is made even more difficult by the fact that, as therapists know only too well, shame typically tries to hide itself: people who feel shame usually avoid talking about it and often deploy all kinds of psychological strategies to avoid even acknowledging it to themselves, so there is a real danger that shame dynamics may play hidden destructive roles without anyone being able to address them. For all these reasons, shame should be of interest to anyone investigating mass atrocity. As we will show in a moment, the topic of shame in relation to mass atrocity is very wide and has multiple facets and dimensions. In this chapter, we cannot address them all. We rather aim at throwing some light on the experiential and ethical aspects of one of the most baffling varieties of shame in the context of mass atrocity: survivor shame. We begin by discussing three subject positions (victim, bystander, and perpetrator) and explain why we focus on survivor shame. We then review and discuss the analyses of survivor shame offered by two influential authors, Giorgio Agamben and Ruth Leys. We subsequently move to our own account of survivor shame by contrasting it with related phenomena such as embarrassment and humiliation.

U2 - 10.1017/9781316563281.009

DO - 10.1017/9781316563281.009

M3 - Book chapter

SP - 162

EP - 184

BT - Emotions and Mass Atrocity

A2 - Brudholm, Thomas

A2 - Lang, Johannes

PB - Cambridge University Press

CY - Cambridge

ER -