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SHAME

THE POLITICS AND POWER OF AN EMOTION

Keen synthesizes a wealth of research to explore the dynamics of shame, but a lack of focus leads to mixed results.

A study of how an overdose of shaming and corresponding shamelessness has made reasoned debate impossible.

You should be ashamed of yourself. In today's polarized, overheated political environment, it has become the go-to attack for one’s enemies. But what does it mean, and what role does shame play in modern society? Keen, a professor of conflict studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science, delves into these issues. He differentiates shame from guilt, noting that guilt relates to a particular action, while shame makes the person question their own worth. In this sense, shame is much more damaging and internalized, and it can generate deep-seated psychological problems. Keen sees shame as essentially a social construct, arising when fundamental rules or norms are broken. Shame can have a positive side if it acts as a spur to a reconsideration and improvement of one's life, but in many cases, it can eat away at a person for decades. The author is well versed in the subject matter, but some of the chapters don’t connect to his theme. He makes his intense dislike of Donald Trump abundantly clear. While it’s undeniable that Trump has demonstrated shamelessness many times during his life, these passages feel more like polemic than academic analysis. There are plenty of examples of shamelessness on the left of the spectrum that could have balanced his account. In fact, Keen admits that trying to shame someone often turns into a counterproductive exercise, with the target displaying the attacks as a sign of standing up to enemies. The author claims that he seeks "to hold up this murky object of shame to the light.” It’s a worthy objective, but the book would have been more effective with greater discipline and less hyperbole.

Keen synthesizes a wealth of research to explore the dynamics of shame, but a lack of focus leads to mixed results.

Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023

ISBN: 9780691183756

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Princeton Univ.

Review Posted Online: June 20, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023

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A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979

ISBN: 0061965588

Page Count: 772

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

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BEYOND THE GENDER BINARY

From the Pocket Change Collective series

A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.

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Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.

The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.

A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)

Pub Date: June 2, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5

Page Count: 64

Publisher: Penguin Workshop

Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020

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