Feminine shame/masculine disgrace a literary excursion through gender and embodied emotion

• Published in: Cultural studies review 2012-12, Vol.18 (3), p.310-333
• Main Author: Nurka, Camille
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Deformities; Femininity; Heterosexuality; Humanities; Phenomenology; Sperm; Terminology
• ISSN: 1837-8692; 1446-8123; 1837-8692
• DOI: 10.5130/csr.v18i3.2482

In both common everyday language and high theory one is liable to find in the meaning of shame the presence of disgrace. Yet this essay will argue that these two concepts are quite distinct and that there is a particular cultural articulation of shame and disgrace that runs counter to the normative understanding of their symbiotic unity. Specifically, I argue that the primary difference is that where shame is embodied, or an emotion fundamentally of the body, disgrace is facialised and thus able to rid itself of the body in its capacity as the privileged representative of the face. Disgrace contains within its discursive structure the promise of transcendence unavailable to shame because it is able to unburden itself of the restrictions of materiality. This distinction thus reveals itself to be gendered in character in its reprisal of the familiar Cartesian dialectic. In this sense, the cultural and metaphysical meaning of shame takes on a feminine character through its association with the body. This is further reinforced by the historical positioning of the female body as privileged representative of sexual shame. In the final part of the essay I draw from J.M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace as a text that makes visible the tension between shame and disgrace as one between immanent feminine shame and transcendent masculine disgrace. In this instance, the literary text functions as a tangible demonstration of the gendered constellation of the two terms.