{"id":49243,"date":"2025-10-31T20:22:49","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T20:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?p=49243"},"modified":"2025-10-31T20:22:49","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T20:22:49","slug":"frederic-gros-a-philosophy-of-shame-a-revolutionary-emotion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?p=49243","title":{"rendered":"Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Gros, \u201eA Philosophy of Shame: A Revolutionary Emotion\u201c"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An original reflection on shame as the central feeling of our age \u2014 the expression of an anger that is the necessary condition for new struggles.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can shame become a source of political strength? Faced with injustice, growing inequality and systemic violence, we cry out in shame. We feel ashamed of obscene wealth amid wider deprivation. We feel ashamed of humanity for its ruthless and relentless exploitation of the earth. We feel ashamed of the racism and sexism that permeate society and our everyday lives.

This difficult emotion is not just sadness or a withdrawal into oneself, nor is it a paralysing sense of inadequacy. As Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Gros argues in A Philosophy of Shame<\/em>, it arises when our perception of reality rejects passivity and resignation and instead embraces imagination. Shame thus becomes the expression of an anger that is a powerful, transformative force \u2014one that assumes a radical character.

In dialogue with authors such as Primo Levi, Annie Ernaux, Virginie Despentes and James Baldwin, Gros explores a concept that is still little understood in its anthropological, moral, psychological and political depths. Shame is a revolu\u00adtionary sentiment because it lies at the foundation of any path of subjective recognition, transformation and struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviews<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201eIn this elegant, psychologically sharp and richly referenced analysis, Gros shows us how shame, as Marx wrote, \u2018is already a revolution of its kind\u2019. In chapters that weave deftly between politics, literature and psychoanalysis, he leads us carefully through the familiar sources of shame (social contempt, moral violence, bodily disgust) to its collective and public iterations (shame at one\u2019s people, or even one\u2019s species). He shows us how it is through embracing shame as a passionate engagement with the world that one escapes its melancholic and disfiguring effects.\u201c \u2013 Richard Seymour<\/strong>, author of Disaster Nationalism<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201eEquipped with many references to Freud, French classics, and Greek philosophy, Gros attempts to reveal the complexities of human shame by parsing it out into a series of taxonomies such as moral shame, digital shame, and shame rooted in how one is perceived by others.\u201c \u2013 Kirkus Reviews<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the author<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Gros<\/strong> is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris XII and the Institute of Political Studies, Paris. He was the editor of the last lectures of Michel Foucault at the Coll\u00e8ge de France. He has written books on psychiatry, law, and war as well as the best-selling Philosophy of Walking<\/em>. He lives in Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Translated by Andrew James Bliss<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

May 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\nA Philosophy of Shame<\/a>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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