Shame has long been used to punish, silence, and maintain the status quo. But now, seven years #MeToo, it is also a force for change. <\/span>La Revue nouvelle <\/span><\/i>explores this \u2018understudied, unloved emotion\u2019, with texts tracing a history of shame, questioning its place in schools, literature, and sociolinguistics, and presenting stories and poems.<\/span><\/p>\n Who is qualified, or entitled, to talk about shame? As victims of sexual abuse increasingly speak up, journalists turn to experts for comment on the testimony, \u2018to give it context, to explain to the victim and the wider public what exactly she has been a victim of\u2019. This \u2018hierarchization of speech ultimately silences the victim\u2019, writes historian Val\u00e9rie Piette.<\/span><\/p>\n Since the nineteenth century, disciplines from literature to medicine have considered emotions a legitimate subject. But history has been a notable exception: conscious of \u2018the right to forget\u2019, the risk of reopening wounds, and the need to \u2018produce distance\u2019, it has trodden lightly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In the nineteenth century, scientific and moralistic discourse linked shame to the body and sexuality, forging a tool to control women\u2019s bodies and maintain the social order. Single women were cast \u2018as both in danger and a danger to society\u2019. In Belgium, institutions sprung up for unmarried mothers-to-be, where the \u2018fruit of their shame\u2019 could be hidden away and the \u2018fallen\u2019 women redeemed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n From medieval times through to the twentieth century, shame has been \u2018part of the fabric of justice\u2019 in France, with public humiliation doubling as punishment and deterrence. After liberation in 1944, women accused of <\/span>collaboration horizontale<\/span><\/i> had their heads shaved in public, \u2018their bodies paying the price for France\u2019s collaboration\u2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For Piette, the history of shame is intertwined with that of rape. \u2018For a long time, rapist and victim were jointly condemned\u2019, the reputation of both stained. In France it took the arrival of second-wave feminism to proclaim that \u2018the shame is over\u2019. After a pivotal rape case in 1978 \u2013 the first to result in criminal convictions \u2013 and the enactment of a legal definition of rape two years later, shame started to \u2018change sides\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n Though schools are supposedly places of emancipation, this can come at a high price. For some young people, writes Marie-Christine Pollet, school is \u2018where social shame emerges\u2019 and where \u2018a negative class conscience\u2019 is formed as one confronts new social milieux and one\u2019s family\u2019s place in the social hierarchy. This juncture can enable young people to ascend socially, without suffering, on three conditions: they \u2018authorize\u2019 themselves to become something other than their parents; their parents accept this trajectory; and they \u2018recognize the legitimacy of the history and practices of their parents\u2019, even as they seek emancipation from them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But if these conditions are not met, the \u2018cleavage\u2019 and \u2018internal conflict\u2019 can be devastating. Some try to erase all traces of their past and reinvent themselves. Some duplicate themselves to fit into two worlds, \u2018using two accents \u2026 and obeying two alternative cultural codes\u2019. Others split themselves in two.<\/span><\/p>\n Pollet highlights writers who explore these ruptures. The \u2018autosociobiography\u2019 of Annie Ernaux, an unflinching chronicler of shame, describes her experiences as a \u2018class traitor\u2019. Entering secondary school, ignorant of its codes, she discovers humiliation. She hates her parents for it, holding them responsible: \u2018They have taught me nothing, it\u2019s their fault people mock me \u2026 it\u2019s their language that, despite my precautions, my barrier between school and home, eventually crosses over, slips into a piece of homework, an answer\u2019. In this crucible, new relationships with school and language emerge.<\/span><\/p>\n Sociolinguistics explores relations of domination through language. Majority languages and language practices establish norms, and \u2018transgressing or disregarding a norm\u2019 makes us \u2018feel shame before others\u2019. But \u2018assimilating the norms, we feel shame before ourselves\u2019: linguistic \u2018self-hatred\u2019. For linguistic minorities, then, is shame inevitable?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Developed in the 1960s, writes Claudine Mo\u00efse, the concept of linguistic self-hatred reflects the struggles of decolonization, women\u2019s liberation and civil rights movements in the US. It relies on \u2018a radical unity of the minority group\u2019 and the stigmatization of those who do not participate in its emancipation. It creates a \u2018binary and exclusive categorization\u2019 with resistance on one side and \u2018acts of betrayal or disloyalty\u2019 on the other. This simplification has obscured \u2018individual attitudes\u2019, including \u2018forms of indifference\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n To \u2018free the subject from guilt\u2019, argues Mo\u00efse, sociolinguistics must adapt to the new historical and scientific paradigms. The twentieth century\u2019s social struggles have been replaced by \u2018the emergence of an autonomous subject\u2019 whose \u2018individual power to act is linked to their social conditions of existence\u2019. The notion of shame must be rethought in this framework and new analytical methods developed.<\/span><\/p>\n Are we seeing the end of shame? Maybe not. But half a century after the feminist theorist Kate Millett declared that \u2018the shame is over\u2019, we have reached a watershed moment, a \u2018public, collective affirmation of individuals\u2019 shame\u2019. In the #MeToo movement, shame is being vocalized and unpicked, reclaimed and repurposed, by people from all walks of life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Published in cooperation with CAIRN International Edition<\/a>, written by Cadenza Academic Translations<\/em>.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nHistory of shame<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.eurozine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/LRN-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nShame at school<\/h2>\n
Language and shame<\/h2>\n
![\"CAIRN](\"https:\/\/www.eurozine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/logo_Cairn.jpg\"){kind=logo}
<\/p>\n