Philosophy of Shame

FRÉDÉRIC GROS is Professor of Political Humanities at Sciences Po Paris. He edited Michel Foucault's books in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Gallimard) and his lectures at the Collège de France from 1981 to 1984. He is the author of a number of essays on con-temporary issues, including disobedience, shame and war. He is also the author of the bestselling book A Philosophy of Walking.

• Foreword1. A Bad Reputation2. Societies Without Honour?3. Social Disdain4. A Ghost Story5. Melancholy6. The Total Social Fact: Incest and Rape (Traumatic Shame)7. The Sexual Foundations of the Republic8. Aidos9. Philosophy as the Great Shamer10. Future Imperfect11. Intersectional Shame12. Systemic Shame13. Revolutionary ShameNotes

In this elegant, psychologically sharp and richly referenced analysis, Gros shows us how shame, as Marx wrote, 'is already a revolution of its kind'. In chapters that weave deftly between politics, literature and psychoanalysis, he leads us carefully through the familiar sources of shame (social contempt, moral violence, bodily disgust) to its collective and public iterations (shame at one's people, or even one's species). He shows us how it is through embracing shame as a passionate engagement with the world that one escapes its melancholic and disfiguring effects.