The Body and Shame: Phenomenology, Feminism, and the Socially Shaped Body investigates the concept of body shame and explores its significance when considering philosophical accounts of embodied subjectivity. Body shame only finds its full articulation in the presence (actual or imagined) of others within a rule and norm governed milieu. As such, it bridges our personal, individual and embodied experience with the social, cultural and political world that contains us. Luna Dolezal argues that understanding body shame can shed light on how the social is embodied, that is, how the body—experienced in its phenomenological primacy by the subject—becomes a social and cultural artifact, shaped by external forces and demands. The Body and Shame introduces leading twentieth-century phenomenological and sociological accounts of embodied subjectivity through the work of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault and Norbert Elias. Dolezal examines the embodied, social and political features of body shame. contending that body shame is both a necessary and constitutive part of embodied subjectivity while simultaneously a potential site of oppression and marginalization. Exploring the cultural politics of shame, the final chapters of this work explore the phenomenology of self-presentation and a feminist analysis of shame and gender, with a critical focus on the practice of cosmetic surgery, a site where the body is literally shaped by shame. The Body and Shame will be of great interest to scholars and students in a wide variety of fields, including philosophy, phenomenology, feminist theory, women’s studies, social theory, cultural studies, psychology, sociology, and medical humanities.

Shame is one of the most stigmatized and stigmatizing of emotions. Often characterized as an emotion in which the subject holds a global, negative self-assessment, shame is typically understood to mark the subject as being inadequate in some way, and a sizable amount of work on shame focuses on its problematic or unhealthy aspects, effects, or consequences. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Shame reorients readers to a more balanced understanding of what shame is, as well as its value and social function. The contributors recognize shame as a complex, richly layered, conscious or unconscious phenomenon, and the collection offers an understanding of how theories of shame can help or hinder us in understanding ourselves, others, and the world around us. It also highlights how a diverse range of perspectives on shame can enlighten our understanding of both the positive and negative aspects of this powerful emotion. Edited by Cecilea Mun, these chapters by an international group of scholars reflect a broad range of methods, disciplinary perspectives, and both theoretical and practical concerns regarding shame.

Each essay in this volume provides a cultural perspective on shame. More specifically, each chapter focuses on the question of how culture can differentially affect experiences of shame for members of that culture. As a collection, this volume provides a cross-cultural perspective on shame, highlighting the various similarities and differences of experiences of shame across cultures. In Part 1, each contributor focuses primarily on how shame is theorized in a non-English-speaking culture, and address how the science of shame ought to be pursued, how it ought to identify its object of study, what methods are appropriate for a rigorous science of shame, and how a method of study can determine or influence a theory of shame. In Part 2, each contributor is primarily concerned with a cultural practice of shame, and addresses how shame is related to a normative understanding of our self as a person and an individual member of a community, how culture and politics affect the value and import of shame, and what the relationship between culture and politics is in the construction of shamed identities. Cultural Perspectives on Shame will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in cross-cultural philosophy, philosophy of emotion, moral psychology, and the social sciences.

Reading Sartre is an indispensable resource for students of phenomenology, existentialism, ethics and aesthetics, and anyone interested in the relationship between phenomenology and analytic philosophy. Specially commissioned chapters examine Sartre’s achievements, and consider his importance to contemporary philosophy.

Shame remains at the core of much psychological distress and can eventuate as physical symptoms, yet experiential approaches to healing shame are sparse. Links between shame and art making have been felt, intuited, and examined, but have not been sufficiently documented by depth psychologists. Shame and the Making of Art addresses this lacuna by surveying depth psychological conceptions of shame, art, and the role of creativity in healing, contemporary and historical shame ideologies, as well as recent psychobiological studies on shame. Drawing on research conducted with participants in three different countries, the book includes candid discussions of shame experiences. These experiences are accompanied by Cluff’s heuristic inquiry into shame with an interpretative phenomenological analysis that focuses on how participants negotiate the relationship between shame and the making of art. Cluff’s movement through archetypal dimensions, especially Dionysian, is developed and discussed throughout the book. The results of the research are further explicated in terms of comparative studies, wherein the psychological processes and impacts observed by other researchers and effects on self-conscious maladaptive emotions are described. Shame and the Making of Art should be essential reading for academics, researchers, and postgraduate students engaged in the study of psychology and the arts. It will be of particular interest to psychologists, Jungian psychotherapists, psychiatrists, social workers, creativity researchers, and anyone interested in understanding the dynamics of this shame and self-expression.

This volume provides systematic, interdisciplinary, and intercultural impulses for a phenomenological pedagogy of emotions, feelings, and moods without subordinating them to the logocentric dualism of emotion and rationality. Starting from foundational and cultural perspectives on pedagogical relations of education, learning, and Bildung, specific emotions in individual studies, as well as different approaches of important representatives of phenomenological research on emotions are presented. The contributions include pedagogical, philosophical, and empirical approaches to feelings, emotions, and moods, highlighting their fundamental importance and productivity for learning, Bildung, and education in different pedagogical institutions and fields.