Shame: A Feminist Analysis

If feminism has to address shame, then it must also locate how shame arises to corroborate with prescriptive roles of living in society with certain marked identities- male, female, muslim, hindu etc. In a society that consider sex as dirty, we must look at the way we have generated multiple discourses about the body and sex in order to maintain an order.
Gender being performative, as Butler suggests, is an indicator of how cultural regulatory ideals reinforce their power through the performances bodies have to constantly enact and conform to allow themselves to become subjects.
The effects of shame are often debilitating. Shame targets one’s perception of oneself and its effects include being ostracized, lack of public and familial support,
The shame response itself communicates a discommunication between people when one lowers or averts her gaze and breaks off facial recognition with other. It is part of a learned pattern, part of strategy to self-consciously halt further social communication. This barrier happens because one of the parties becomes ‘strange’ and cannot communicate (354). Shame is consuming and Tomkins recognizes that shame and pride play a critical role to understand how human beings are motivated to act the way we do. A person is motivated enough to surrender or expose themselves in order to resist shame. Why is shame taken personally? Considered as ‘sickness within the self’ when one feels ashamed, shame calls attention of others to the body in which the self lives and makes visible her shame(359) It is this aspect that Tomkins believes make pride and shame ‘central motives’(359). Shame encloses the distance between the subject and object of shame such that the reflexive nature of the affect implies that the shame rests in the subject. The exposure of this shame to others is painful and is captured through the facial signals.
Sedgwick explores the centrality of shame in one’s life through the aspect of performativity. She agrees with Tomkins on the role he believes socialization has in determining shame. Shame arouses deep disharmony when one is unable to evoke a positive reaction from another person thereby constructing barriers to socialibility. She stresses how in experiencing shame there is a movement from subject to object, a changing of how one perceives oneself through the responses of others towards her. What does it mean to become ‘something’ as she suggests in cases of relationships based on power