In middle school, I proudly told my classmates that I was a democrat, and have since been a dedicated liberal. However, at some point - two years ago? a decade ago? - I could no longer follow the burgeoning Left movement that we now refer to as Woke. I have responded to Woke culture with anger, frustration and bafflement, but last week I decided to approach the Woke Left more anthropologically, with curiosity.
Soon, I was ping-ponging around the internet trying to find a big passage of Woke thought for my investigation (Reddit was too glib and meme-y). I lucked out when I came across this Substack article written by Laurie Penny (they/them), who turns out to be a semi-famous, published feminist. They seem known and well regarded, and not an internet rando (like me). A standout comment was this, written in the context of why it’s so hard for people to change when confronted with their shortcomings:
Firstly, because most of us were raised in shame cultures where there was never a possibility of being held and supported while we learned how to be responsible for our actions.
Wait, what? We live in a culture of shame?
For me, it immediately brought to mind shame versus guilt cultures, an idea I overheard in peripheral conversations in anthropological departments when I was in college. I looked it up. The idea of shame versus guilt cultures originates from The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture, an ethnography published in the 1940s by an American academic, Ruth Benedict, at a time when the US was very motivated to frame Japanese culture. Today, Benedict's work is criticized for the same reasons all old ethnographies are criticized: they are arrogant, assume objectivity, colonialism, and no power-sharing, yadda yadda, etc. I assume the idea fell by the wayside (but see this for a more recent treatment). I was surprised that a feminist got into shame culture, when it seems that academic publications on the topic are sparse (just type shame culture or guilt culture into Google Scholar). Weirdly, missionaries appear interested in this cultural classification.
Further google adventures then led me to some additional shame culture connections. The work of Brene Brown talks about shame-resistant and shame-prone cultures in the context of therapy and self-improvement. And upon second reading of the Penny article, I more fully understood that Penny was referencing something called nurturance culture, which is related to shame culture.
What then, is shame culture?
Benedict classified the West as guilt-based culture, and Japan as shame-based culture. Both orientations seek to control non-normative or bad behavior, but do so in different ways (from Wikipedia):
In a guilt society, control is maintained by creating and continually reinforcing the feeling of guilt (and the expectation of punishment now or in the afterlife) for certain condemned behaviors. The guilt worldview focuses on law and punishment. A person in this type of culture may ask, "Is my behavior fair or unfair?" This type of culture also emphasizes individual conscience.
In a shame society, the means of control is the inculcation of shame and the complementary threat of ostracism. The shame–honor worldview seeks an "honor balance" and can lead to revenge dynamics. A person in this type of culture may ask, "Shall I look ashamed if I do X?" or "How will people look at me if I do Y?" Shame cultures are typically based on the concepts of pride and honor, and appearances are what count.
Brene Brown also sees cultures of shame, but doesn’t necessarily put it on a spectrum from shame to guilt. For her, shame and guilt are different emotions, and instead cultures either make great or little use of shame. Brown thinks shame is a bad thing:
“Shame resilient cultures nurture folks who are much more open to soliciting, accepting, and incorporating feedback. These cultures also nurture engaged, tenacious people who expect to have to try and try again to get it right - people who are much more willing to get innovative and creative in their efforts. A sense of worthiness inspires us to be vulnerable, share openly, and persevere. Shame keeps us small, resentful, and afraid. In shame-prone cultures, where parents, leaders, and administrators consciously or unconsciously encourage people to connect their self-worth to what they produce, I see disengagement, blame, gossip, stagnation, favoritism, and a total dirth of creativity and innovation.”
Nurturance culture, coined by Nora Samaran (and maybe others?), doesn’t appear to have a clear take on shame. Samaran appears to use shame and guilt interchangeably, which does not align with Benedict’s or Brown’s understanding. I was unable to quickly find a passage that would define nurturance culture, and probably read more of it than I wanted to. Here’s a representative piece that I skimmed. In the beginning of this piece, I interpret Samaran as being against shame. Here and in other places, she’s associated shame culture with rape culture, and so one might conclude that she believes that shame cultures are bad and used for immoral and hurtful ends by the powerful. Yet she goes on to discuss social justice, and provides an example of white students dealing with shame in regards to the legacy of colonialism. She suggests that students should sit with shame, and it is our attachment style, whether we are securely or insecurely attached , that will determine if we can handle shame in a way that leads to growth. In this moment, she conveys that shame is necessary for personal growth, and so it would seem that shame is not always bad in her view.
So. Three different perspectives on shame and shame cultures found in about 2 days of internet searching. The first thing to take away is that when it comes to shame, we have choices. Shame is not the only tool to handle violations of norms or morals. Guilt is also in our tool box, and may have fewer drawbacks. The importance of shame may be cultural, or specific to subcultures, so we may want to be sensitive to others for whom shame is a cultural way of being. However, we might still choose whether shame-based or shame-prone cultures are something with which we want to engage ourselves, and hopefully this knowledge allows us to build cultures that work best for us and other people.
That Penny views our culture (the West?) as primarily a shame culture may be their honest subjective assessment, based on real experiences. In their article, Penny relates examples of shame or shame-cultures in the West that I readily recognize. It’s possible that some people are more strongly experiencing shame and shame cultures than others. For example, I imagine that LGBT individuals often experience shame (unfortunately) when coming out, so if you are a part of this community, shame may be a life experience that looms large. My own experiences in some women-dominated spaces also feel very shame heavy, though that’s my subjective experience. But clearly shame and guilt oriented cultures exist side-by-side in the West. I can think of any number of American or European systems that are guilt oriented. The idea of sin and, well, our justice system that adjudicates guilt and is founded on concepts of individual intentions and responsibility, fairness, and punishment is undeniably guilt-oriented. Both systems are operating.
Penny’s approach to shame is very similar to Samaran’s. Penny uses guilt and shame interchangeably. They also do not take a clear stance on shame (good, bad, functional, not functional). For example, they say that shame is a mechanism which makes people particularly unlikely to admit when they've done something bad, which can make it a difficult mechanism by which to advance social justice knowledge. They believe that shame tends to put focus on inherent character rather than actions, and we tend to defend our inherent character reflexively. However, Penny continues that being an adult means doing things you don't like to do, which I interpret as meaning we should live with shame as a way of becoming a better person and eating our broccoli even if we don't like it. Penny recounts several uses of shame culture, for example, abusive men in Hollywood that used shame to silence women about mistreatment or assault, but also social justice workers that have used shame to bring people past racial or misogynistic harm they've caused and repaired their relationship with the whole. My best interpretation of the piece is that Penny thinks shame is pervasive, so it is best used by the right people, in the right way, for the right reasons.
Do the Woke approach norms and morality from a shame-based culture? The movement checks the boxes. Woke culture achieves many ends through ostracism. For the famous or powerful ostracism takes the form of canceling. For neighbors and family ostracism is carried out by ending relationships. Woke culture is preoccupied with appearances: the correct optics and language, symbolism, and social media are often more important that direct action. Trying to solve a problem can (in some extreme parts of the Woke spectrum) be considered an inappropriate way to respond. Woke culture tilts toward collectivism, being critical of individualism, and shame cultures are associated with greater emphasis on responsibility to the collective. At the extreme, some Woke figures will demand that thinking for yourself and asking to discuss topics rather than accept the wisdom of others, centers yourself over the narratives of the oppressed or lived experiences, in other words, the wisdom of the collective. This can be practiced as a request for people to be humble, which often means to be silent. If we think about the Woke left and Brown’s shame-prone approach, I also see a lot of parallels. When citizens or students report not wanting to share an opinion for fear of retribution, that’s an indicator of shame. The social justice Twitter sphere seems ripe with blame, gossip, cliques and favoritism, which is another shame indicator.
And do the Woke think shame is inevitable? Shame is related to the weighty feel of others' opinions. The rise of social media is a likely culprit related to increased feelings of shame in regard to norms and moral issues. With likes and downvotes as well as increased opinion sharing, social media makes us more aware of others' opinions and the collective judgment of our and others’ opinions. The relationship between shame and social media is well noted, for example here, and here. Younger individuals are more likely to be terminally online and to be exposed to emotional and cultural impacts of the internet. Further, younger people are more likely to be liberal or progressive. This could create an emergent shame-based culture around progressive youth politics, which would mean we aren’t just dealing with the internet and increased feelings of shame, but a culture of shame among young Woke adherents. In a culture of shame, shame is normalized and knowingly wielded as a tool to extract adherence to moral goals. And although the Woke may knowingly wield shame, they might do so because, as steeped in youth and internet culture as they are, they don’t know there are alternatives to handling moral infractions.
It’s unfortunate, and maybe dishonest, that leaders in the Woke sphere aren't challenging the use of shame within social justice movements. And instead, might be trying to re-brand “the right kind of shame” as healthy. I find it hard to believe that Woke leaders (e.g., Penny, Samaran) can’t conceive of or aren't aware of other approaches. If I was going to assume the worst, I might think such leaders are obfuscating conversations on varying cultural approaches to handling moral infractions in order to keep people in a shame-based culture. Maybe focusing on shame instead of guilt is a way to shoehorn in communal or collectivist ways of thinking without explicitly engaging people in whether communal versus individual ways of thinking are something they prefer. And that’s very sad, considering Woke leader’s knowledge about how shame has been leveraged to hurt so many people in the past, like LGBT community members, the poor and women.
This lack of willingness to concede other ways of doing norms and morality is especially aggravating when the Woke try to engage the non-Woke. I don’t think that Penny or Samaran would distinguish between someone who refuses to engage in shame-based culture (like myself) versus someone who refuses to care about social justice causes. Which is part of the shame sleight-of-hand; if Penny acknowledged my rejection of shame, it would indicate there were other ways of doing social justice work.
Reflecting on the intertwining of shame and social justice causes me anger, because I have very poor experiences with shame-based cultures and I hate to see them used alongside issues that I value. I greatly dislike the possibility that social justice politics are dominated by people that cannot or will not disengage from shame. I think that shame holds people in contempt, in that it uses fear of exclusion to get to desired ends, instead of focusing on true agreement (or at least alignment) among people. How can you say you truly care about and believe in people while using shame? How can you say you are for social justice if you don’t believe in people? However, I also feel for those involved in Woke politics. Leveraging shame to get the ends you desire and externalized validation are not good or healthy things. I believe that people that use shame, feel shame. We see them shame and belittle others, and all I can think is that internally they are small and have low self-esteem. I wish they could see that.
*No comments section for now. Maybe later if there is any interest.