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Wednesday, August 14, 2019

DE-SHAMING : STRATEGY OF THE INVISIBLE MAN Resulting in PARRHESIA

DE-SHAMING/PARRHESIA

Beautiful portrait. The photographer sees you.
Your DE-SHAMING Error:NOT reporting on your Birthday.
Would make them SQUIRM inside much more


“When things get tough,” Neil Gaiman advised on in his fantastic commencement address on the creative life, “this is what you should do: Make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician — make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor — make good art. IRS on your trail — make good art. Cat exploded — make good art.” One could easily extrapolate, “Big Brother on your ass
— make good art.”   
Dr. Zuzanna Szatanik (Professor of Gender Studies and Literature)
 and Creston Davis of GCAS
. .....We discussed, for example, how real thinkers and progressives have been
targeted both in the United States and in Europe for being creative in terms of
the activist tactics.  In this respect, Zuza’s and my work very much intersect
because not only does our work attempt to uncover hidden ideological power
(class-struggle, racism, sexism, lookism etc.) but how that power is used to
reproduce oppressive conditions for other marginalized and oppressed voices. 
What is perhaps even more disturbing is how pretend progressives (people
who identify themselves as victims of social and political oppression) will use
strategies to shame other oppressed groups in the name of self-righteous
“justice”.  Often groups who deploy these heavy-handed strategies
of “shame” are themselves members of highly privileged and powerful
groups even though they perceive themselves as victims
What is brilliant about Zuza’s book, De-shamed. Feminist strategies of transgression. The case of Lorna Crozier´s poetry, is that it demonstrates a very clear and compelling argument for how shame can be traversed precisely by giving voice to women. By allowing (or risking) women to voice their shame they are able to trans-gress the power that shame has had over them. As a consequence of voicing shame–women can be liberated from the power that shame has had over them both psychologically and socially (symbolically). What I especially like about the basic matrix of this book is that this same “de-shaming” strategy can be used to liberate other perceived acts of shame; indeed Zuza is brilliant in identifying the logic of shaming itself. MORE


Often when a person in power exacts 
their power onto a target (a group or 
person) they will use tactics of shame 
in order to silence the victim.  That is, 
they will “frame” the targeted victim in 
terms of “shaming” so that the target 
(the one who is a victim of sexual 
abuse or of a false accusation etc.) 
will be too ashamed to speak the truth– 
to trans-gress the oppressor by 
exposing the oppressor as the true 
culprit of injustice.  By discovering the 
power of “de-shaming” we are able to
expose the oppressor for what they 
truly are. But not only are you able to 
expose the oppressor you are at the 
same time liberated from their 
oppressive scheme of “shaming” you.

 In this way the one 
who feels shame is able to reverse the 
table by exposing the truth, 
even if the 
telling of that truth is perceived as shameful.


Ai WeiWei used to be a dissident artist in China, now free, he is the same in the world. Chinese government put surveillance cameras in his studio and home. Not in his bedroom. Ai WeiWei installed one in his bedroom. The government begged him to take it away. He refused. Installing his own camera was an act of DE-SHAMING!
    Richard Hambleton- Jumping Shadow       Fight Club?