1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910459078903321

Autore

Leys Ruth

Titolo

From guilt to shame : Auschwitz and after [[electronic resource] /] / Ruth Leys

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Princeton, : Princeton University Press, c2007

ISBN

1-4008-2798-1

1-282-45831-0

9786612458316

Edizione

[Course Book]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (212 p.)

Collana

20/21

Disciplina

155.9/3

Soggetti

Guilt

Shame

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) - Psychological aspects

Holocaust survivors - Psychology

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION. From Guilt to Shame -- CHAPTER ONE. Survivor Guilt -- CHAPTER TWO. Dismantling Survivor Guilt -- CHAPTER THREE. Image and Trauma -- CHAPTER FOUR. Shame Now -- CHAPTER FIVE. The Shame of Auschwitz -- CONCLUSION -- APPENDIX -- INDEX

Sommario/riassunto

Why has shame recently displaced guilt as a dominant emotional reference in the West? After the Holocaust, survivors often reported feeling guilty for living when so many others had died, and in the 1960's psychoanalysts and psychiatrists in the United States helped make survivor guilt a defining feature of the "survivor syndrome." Yet the idea of survivor guilt has always caused trouble, largely because it appears to imply that, by unconsciously identifying with the perpetrator, victims psychically collude with power. In From Guilt to Shame, Ruth Leys has written the first genealogical-critical study of the vicissitudes of the concept of survivor guilt and the momentous but largely unrecognized significance of guilt's replacement by shame. Ultimately, Leys challenges the theoretical and empirical validity of the



shame theory proposed by figures such as Silvan Tomkins, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Giorgio Agamben, demonstrating that while the notion of survivor guilt has depended on an intentionalist framework, shame theorists share a problematic commitment to interpreting the emotions, including shame, in antiintentionalist and materialist terms.