Freddy Purcell covers the final Phil on Tap of the year, a fascinating dive into the experience and structure of shame, from a new speaker.
For our final Phil on Tap of the year, we enjoyed Luna’s first talk with the society. The talk comes from a book on the same topic that will hopefully be published and accessible online within the year.
Luna began by introducing shame as an affective component of social oppression that captures its lived experience more than other concepts like stigma or discrimination. Shame is a negative self-conscious emotion, so involves seeing yourself through the eyes of another: whether this be a specific individual, imagined, or an internalised ideal of some social norm. Luna also described how shame is a powerful emotion, and one that it seems is unique to humans, as it relates evolutionarily to group membership. Way back when we were out in the wilderness, shame would indicate that we had transgressed a social norm, so risked being thrown out of our group and left to fend for ourselves. Luna argued that shame therefore plays a necessary role in regulating group membership, but because shame directly relates to our survival instincts, it can override other emotions and lead us to do apparently irrational things to avoid the pain of shame.
Another interesting aspect of shame is its ubiquity. Drawing on Goffman’s work on micro-interactions, Luna suggested that shame guides all our social interactions as we constantly seek to meet social standards. For example, how close you walk to someone while speaking to them, at what pace, how much eye contact you make, are all behaviours that relate to social norms. Of course, shame is often pro-social as it ensures social cohesion. However, in some cases it can be used to force individuals or groups out of a society in an anti-social way, as in oppression.
When shame is directed against a group of people, Luna described it as structural. Structural shame is often baked into the system, meaning that it is quietly present across society. One example Luna gave was having medical scrubs of only a certain size, so larger individuals feel ashamed when they cannot find clothes that fit them. Structural shame is also reflected by bodily comportment, as individuals might try to minimise their presence with a quiet voice or slouched posture. Luna therefore showed that structural shame is not only present across all interactions and the material infrastructure of society, but also in many aspects of the lived experience of the oppressed.
As a phenomenologist, Luna wants to provide greater detail on the experience of structural shame, spending a large part of her book on this topic. One of the most puzzling things about structural shame is that a whole group suffers it, but not all members of that group will consciously feel shame. To illustrate this, Luna took an interesting case from feminist theory where one academic noted that her female students would act as if they were inferior to the male students by minimising their presence in various ways, while not consciously believing themselves to be inferior. Luna suggested that shame remains invisible in this way as oppressed individuals learn to anticipate shame and avoid it instinctually. In the case of the female students this might include speaking with a more timid voice to avoid shame felt from speaking out publicly. After three years of a degree, I think this resonated with my experiences of several female friends’ regular negotiations with shame when speaking in class, particularly compared to the ease I know my male friends feel.
To conclude the talk on a positive note, Luna moved to exactly this point. What does it feel like to live without structural shame? On the one hand, the lived experience of shame involves facing stigma, stereotypes, code switching, being hyper-visible or invisible, and many more challenges. On the other, an absence of shame is characterised by the conversely simple feeling of affective ease, a term Luna takes from Lugones’ work on world travelling, where the world is experienced fluidly, without any of the ruptures caused by the constant negotiations involved in navigating the social dynamics mentioned above. A world experienced with affective ease feels full of possibility and is something we should aim to create for all victims of structural shame. Luna hopes that by bringing attention to shame, we can start to implicate this kind of change.
We had some great questions that explored some of the more complex dimensions of structural shame, including the practicalities of overcoming it for social progress. It was lovely to hear from a surprisingly full audience for the end of term. I absolutely loved this talk and how Luna provided such a comprehensive lens through which to examine our social world. So, thank you Luna, and we hope to see you again at Phil on Tap!