Shame

Explores the theoretical and historical dynamics of shame within feminist theory and activism. Emphasies the creative and positive impact of shame. Fills a glaring absence in political theory by undertaking a genealogy of political interventions that predate the 20th century.

Bogdan Popa brings together Rancière’s techniques of disrupting inequality with a queer curiosity in the performativity of shame to show how 19th-century activists embraced certain forms of shame to denaturalise conventional beliefs about sexuality and gender.Shame has often been considered a threat to democratic politics, and was used to degrade and debase sex radicals and political marginals. But certain forms of shame were also embraced by 19th-century activists in an attempt to reverse entrenched power dynamics. Bogdan Popa brings together Rancière’s techniques of disrupting inequality with a queer curiosity in the performativity of shame to show how 19th-century activists denaturalised conventional beliefs about sexuality and gender. This study fills a glaring absence in political theory by undertaking a genealogy of radical queer interventions that predate the 20th century.