Shame in a Kindred: Reading Scenes of Shame in American Fictions from Henry James to Octavia Butler Open Access

Abstract

Is shame irredeemably shameful?What can the experience of shame inform us of our physical and sociopolitical conditions, besides subjecting us to emotional turmoil? Might literary representations of shame offer new insights beyond social scientific interpretations? I strive to answer these challenging questions with my dissertation. Zooming in on scenes of shame and shaming, I seek to free our imagination of shame from established theoretical and clinical conventions. Despite its painful effects on the individual, shame is an extremely productive critical site that engenders ongoing discussions concerning its nature, symptoms, socio-cultural impact, and historical significance, among psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, sociologists, philosophers, and literary critics. The authors whose works anchor this study--Henry James, Nella Larsen, Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison, and Octavia Butler--demonstrate a shared interest in portraying the experience of shame as paradoxically isolating and socially generated and interpreted. This exteriorization of shame, as well as the attention the authors lend to the affect, marks these fictional texts out as close "kindred" in the vast landscape of American literary history, despite their wide variances in style and overt content. I read shame as a biopsychosocial phenomenon that responds to the sociopolitical powers that seek to discipline the human body. I conceive of my project as gesturing at a capaciousness of shame that might dismantle personal, communal, species, social, cultural, spatial, temporal, disciplinary, and epistemological boundaries. 

Table of Contents

Chapter One--Introduction: The Shameless Turn............................................................................. 1

Chapter Two--Pale Shame and the Paranoia Imperative in The Wings of the Dove                              38

Chapter Three--Interpellation and Hysteria Revisited: the Shameless Smile in Sula and Passing       78

Chapter Four--The Ritual of Shame: Hemingway’s The Sun Also Risesand The Garden of Eden      116

Chapter Five--Semper Shame....................................................................................................... 153

Bibliography................................................................................................................................. 191

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	English
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Literature, American
Keyword	American Literature Shame Affect
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Benjamin Reiss, Emory University Michael Moon, Emory University
Committee Members	Walter Kalaidjian, Emory University

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