Shame: Experiencing, Enduring and Resisting the Violence of Vulnerability

Jean Améry insists that our language cannot pierce the realities of the demonic world of Auschwitz. His writings challenge us to read his words, despite their limits, as testimonies to the brutality of the camps and to the suffering of those imprisoned there. James Mensch takes up Améry’s challenge by attending to the word “trust.” In conversation with Mensch, I turn to the word “shame.” The words shame and trust appear in texts that speak to each other. They attest to the violence and vulnerability of our inescapable intersubjectivity. Améry describes two distinct experiences of shame: the shame of destruction and the privilege of shame. The first assaults Améry in the torture room and plagues him in Auschwitz. The second emerges after his liberation. It sparks his revolt against a world where, though the camps are gone, the threat of the shame of destruction lurks. The shame of destruction reveals that as intersubjective subjects, our humanity can be annihilated. The privilege of shame affirms the subject’s intersubjective right to a place in the world. Between these two shames we are left with a question: Will we accept a world where the threat of destructive shame looms or will we take up the privilege of shame revolt?