Shameful Attachments / Attachments to Shame: Affective Unreliability and the Contemporary Moment by Taryn Beukema A thesis submitted to the Department of English Language and Literature in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada August, 2015 Copyright © Taryn Beukema, 2015 Abstract This dissertation undertakes a critical consideration of the productive and beneficent potential of shame. By examining texts in which characters or individuals depart from more traditional narratives, experiences, and/or manifestations of shame, this project aims to deconstruct the historically-entrenched definition of shame as a negative affect and provide a more inclusive and potentially liberating formulation. The introductory chapter charts the dominant trends in shame theory since Freud and articulates some of the main questions that propel the arguments of this dissertation: how do attachments to shame form? What is it that attracts individuals to shame? How do we begin to conceive of a form of shame that does not operate as shame “should?” Via close-readings of Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm, Chapter Two begins to answer some of these questions, examining the relation between shame and desire in order to demonstrate not only the necessity of desire to shame’s instantiation, but the ways in which shame alters our understanding of discourses of desire. Chapter Three investigates the life, writing, and art of Bob Flanagan, performance artist and “supermasochist,” to reveal the sometimes erotic nature of shame. Chapter Four’s analysis of NBC’s The Biggest Loser focuses on the more familiar narrative of shame as an enforcer of social norms, suggesting that the ostensibly passive desire to see others humiliated (schadenfreude) is actually a form of active participation in the modes of governmentality embedded in reality television and thus reveals the ubiquity of attachments to shame in contemporary culture. Chapter Five engages with two Steve McQueen films—Shame (2011) and Twelve Years a Slave (2013)—in order to suggest that the existence of so many different (and differently productive) relations to shame, when widely visible, produces uncertainty about the relation between, and about what constitutes, shame ii and/or shamelessness. Chapter Five’s discussion of the (un)reliability of affective markers leads me, in the Conclusion, to provide a new lens through which we might be able to envision the current affective economy of the United States, one paradoxically characterized by both shame and shamelessness. iii Acknowledgements In his introduction to Shame and Pride, Donald Nathanson recounts the moment he learned that “the very idea of shame is embarrassing to most people” (15), observing that it often seems “Better to hide new ideas in obscurity than risk exposure and humiliation, especially ideas about an unpopular subject” (15). The possibility that individuals might attach to shame, that shame might be a pleasurable experience, or that there might be a relation between shame and desire or shame and eroticism, are all, to put it bluntly, fairly unpopular subjects. This dissertation topic has been met quite often with incredulity, confusion, and cynicism, with many people unable to imagine—or perhaps unwilling to imagine—that shame might, for some, be experienced or function differently. It is with immense gratitude, then, that I acknowledge the individuals that took an interest in this project, that supported it, and that helped me release it from the constraints that sometimes bind so much of shame theory. Words will never express how grateful I am to so many of the Professors in the Department of English at Queen’s University. When not one, but both members of my original supervisory committee received jobs at American universities, I found myself suddenly committee-less, two chapters deep in a project that, at its inception, both terrified and exhilarated me. Fortunately, however, I also found support in Prof. Scott Straker, Prof. Glenn Willmott, and Prof. Sam McKegney, all three of whom stood firmly in my corner. Their kindness, generosity, and willingness to “go to bat” for me were much-needed lights in what was, at times, a very dark tunnel. I am also, and especially, indebted to Prof. Chris Bongie and Prof. Asha Varadharajan for so graciously coming to my project’s rescue by stepping in as my new supervisor and second- iv reader, respectively. Prof. Bongie not only provided me with precisely the kind of insightful, focused feedback that my project so desperately needed, but delivered it so quickly that we would probably need to coin a new word to describe its timeliness. My defense could not have happened so quickly were it not for his efforts. Additionally, Prof. Varadharajan’s advice in both the early and final stages of writing helped me think through some of the “bigger” questions to which this dissertation gives rise. Her keen questioning and critical acuity have been invaluable to my project and have made the days leading up to the defense considerably more reinvigorating and less nerve-wracking than they could have been! I count myself extremely fortunate to be surrounded by so many wonderful colleagues, friends, and family members, who have provided me with an infallible and ever-sustaining support system throughout the various stages of my PhD. I will never forget their words of encouragement, their help in accessing resources (especially during my time in Japan), and their willingness to share with me anything and everything to do with shame that came across their desks and screens. They may never know how vital a role they played in turning this project into what it is. And, of course, to Marc Foley, my partner in love and life and laughter: thank-you for standing by me through it all and for pulling me out of the depths of dissertation-despair more times than I can count. Thank-you for believing in me and for your unwavering interest in my topic and ideas; you not only made me believe in myself and my writing but helped me to see that this was a project worth finishing. You inspire me every day. v Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iv Chapter 1 Introduction: The Shoulds and Shouldn’ts of Shame ..................................................................... 1 Chapter 2 Affects as Objects: Desiring Shame in Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm .......................................... 30 Chapter 3 Masochism and the Erotics of Shame in the Life and Works of Bob Flanagan ........................... 70 Chapter 4 Schadenfreude and The Biggest Loser ........................................................................................ 111 Chapter 5 Shame, Shamelessness, and the (Un)Reliability of Affects in Steve McQueen’s Shame and 12 Years a Slave ............................................................................................................................... 163 Chapter 6 Conclusion: Shame/lessness: Affective Currencies in America’s Emotional Economy ............ 225 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................ 246 vi Chapter 1: Introduction The Shoulds and Shouldn’ts of Shame In 2011, a professor suggested I read Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm, a novel that, unbeknownst to me at the time, would not only motivate me to abandon my previous thesis topic and inspire me to pursue a new one, but would become the basis of my entire project, informing the foundational questions for each and every chapter. While reading the novel for the first time, I was struck by the strange relation it presents between shame and desire, by the ways in which the characters not only attach to shame but also revolve around its sometimes pleasurable guarantees. I had never before encountered such a strange yet thrilling presentation of shame, undercutting dominant theories and understandings of it which state that shame is always an unhappy, alienating, even excruciating experience. When I began to really think about shame and desire, however, I realized that this relation was not only evident in other texts with which I was already familiar, but that it was evident all around me. In order to approach more radical understandings of shame, this thesis begins by thinking through the “should” of shame, the “you should be ashamed of yourself!” rallying cry of the shamer, and that strange almost-imperative notion that shame should be felt in a certain way, at certain times, with certainty. But how should shame be felt? Should it be felt in particular ways? And if so, why? As Leon Wurmser notes, the very word derives from notions of covering and concealing: The word shame is derived from a Germanic root skam/skem (Old High German scama, Anglo-Saxon scamu), with the meaning ‘sense of shame, being shamed, 1 disgrace (Schande).’ It is traced back to the Indo-European root kam/kem: ‘to cover, to veil, to hide.’ The prefixed s (skam) adds the reflexive meaning –‘to cover oneself.’ The notion of hiding is intrinsic to and inseparable from the concept of shame. (The Mask of Shame 29) But if hiding or the avoidance of unwanted exposure is as integral to the concept of shame as its etymology suggests, how is it that