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

From: Creston Davis« Katowice: A New Cultural Revolution–a new postsecular atonalism

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?