A Philosophy of Shame:A Revolutionary Emotion

An original reflection on shame as the central feeling of our age, the expression of an anger that is the necessary condition for new struggles.

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 the world, of wealth in the face of those who have nothing, of the fortune of a few tycoons when it becomes indecent. We feel ashamed for a planet that humanity exploits without restraint, for sexist and racist behaviour. It is not just sadness and withdrawal into oneself, nor is it a paralysing sense of inadequacy.

The feeling analysed in this book arises when our gaze on reality renounces passivity and resignation, and instead makes imagination its critical tool: shame thus becomes the expression of an anger that is power, transformative energy, and assumes to all intents and purposes – as in the reading of Marx, recovered here – a radical value.

In a constant dialogue with authors such as Primo Levi and Annie Ernaux, Virginie Despentes and James Baldwin, Frédéric Gros explores a concept that is still little understood in its depth and in its articulations – anthropological and moral, psychological and political. Shame is a revolutionary sentiment because it lies at the foundation of any path of subjective recognition, transformation, and struggle.