In Praise of Shame at THE LAND OF UNLIKENESS

Joan Copjec’s article “May ’68, the Emotional Month” which appears in Lacan: The Silent Partners (Ed. Slavoj Zizek) fleshes out Lacan’s distinction between shame and guilt in which shame is the experience, very close to anxiety, of being overly proximate to objet a, the object cause of desire. Guilt, on the other hand, is called a sham jouissance by Lacan and betrays a flight from anxiety, and thus a flight from Being. There is a play on the French word for shame (honte) and the science of being (ontology) giving us the neologism, hontology. Guilt arises because one has fixed one’s response to the encounter with the object that induces anxiety, in a desperate effort to control the situation. Copjec writes: The fraudulent nature of this jouissance has everything to do with the fact that it gives one a false sense that the core of one’s being is someething knowable, possessable as an identity, a property, a surplus-value attaching to one’s person.” (109) How then shall we steer clear of this transformation from shame into guilt, especially seeing that capitalism is founded on such a universal move of taking loans out on our shame, securing a future at the cost of Being. One helpful image that Copjec gives us is of the veil that covers this place of shame. Shall we avert our eyes from it? Shall we rip it off? Shall we tremble in fear of the priests who stand before it? Is it not clear that these are all responses which engender guilt (which, don’t forget, has its own peculiar pleasure)? Copjec urges us to notice the veil itself, to enter into its arabesques, to thank God for the distance that it affords us, the breathing room. I’ve been looking at the wonderful images on Davis’ blog, all of which are veils upon the almighty. For our words to be good words, we must speak from these terrible places, from these veils that inspire terror and unknowing. There is no way to abolish anxiety (as Auden said, it is the condition of human existence, and in this way our age is most honest) but there is a way to transform our relationship to it.

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6 Responses to “In Praise of Shame”

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1
05/18/2007 at 19:43

Remember that it the eastern churches the icon is seen as such a veil through which we see into heaven. This is no less true – I maintain – in the western churches and cultures.
2
05/18/2007 at 21:41

Aron, or Davis, first, where are these images? Where do we find “Davis’s” blog?
Second, I’ve been struck by the daily office of Morning Prayer in BCP, in its sentences of praise to be used for the season of Easter, one of which says that Christ has entered through the veil into the true sanctuary, not the one on earth made with hands that is its copy… The Old Testament readings have taken us back to that Holy of Holies a number of times lately. I’ve been pondering this emphasis, that Yahweh wants Moses to make this Tabernacle according to very exact instructions, because it re-enacts something REAL in the beyond, in the presence of God. We know that when Jesus died, “the veil was rent from top to bottom.” I’ve always been fascinated by the architecture of the Tabernacle, “the Tent of Meeting,” and later the Temple, and with the sacrifices carried on within it. I wonder what the Lacanian schema for our enigmatic human condition suggests about this visual/symbolic context (from Hebraic history) that is already in place, “in the fulness of times,” for the interpretation of “the mighty acts of God” that we attempt to contemplate and re-connect with and re-enact during Holy Week? Your thoughts? Or is anyone you know of writing on this? (I’ll check the Copjek essay and the whole collection, thanks!)
3
05/19/2007 at 18:36

Janet, I’ve included a link to Davis’ blog in our non-thematic section of links, although I really should change that heading to non-academic-themes – I just hate the moniker “non-academic”. Anyway, please be sure to visit his page, as there are some really amazing images, and even more illuminating reflections on the images (talk about my giving priority to text over image! Time for me to take a break from writing).

I don’t have many references for you here, re: Lacanian aesthetics, or even the use of images for Holy Week, but Davis lent us a book last year by Rowan Williams on reflections icons of the Madonna and child. As I wrote this comments, I discovered another contemplative book of icons of Christ, also by williams, and another by Nouwen. I’ve added them to my Amazon wishlist so you all could see them in one spot.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/38WUAWVDBZKYT/ref=wl_web/
4
05/19/2007 at 21:35

you know, i think that Lacan may have made some comments on the temple/tabernacle, but I’d have to do some searching. I just read something today (Jameson in Lacan: The Silent Partners) that made me realize I need to get Seminar VII where Lacan does some really interesting things with the ten commandments. Perhaps what is most interesting about the veil/holy of holies is that what exists behind the veil is no image but simply word: YHWH
5
05/20/2007 at 21:32

Is this Lacan, then, with the YHWH behind the veil? Sorry to be so literalistic, but there’s the “mercy seat” behind the veil,where the blood of the ram once a year is placed, shroulded by the two cherubim, and the ark of the covenant is there…?
But I love the idea of YHWH being there… And if the Word or Image dwells always within the Trinity, then perhaps the atoning sacrifice has always dwelt there too? (“Slain from before the foundations of the world”)Letting shame play its role within love’s communion, while cleansing away guilt?
6
05/24/2007 at 19:24

Have you-all seen Zizek’s little book “How to Read Lacan”? It’s absolutely a classic! Maybe it’ll help me understand Aron’s post?! I’m kidding…

THE LAND OF UNLIKENESS