Shame, Gender Violence, and Ethics

Abstract

Shame, Gender Violence, and Ethics: Terrors of Injustice draws from contemporary, concrete atrocities against women and marginalized communities to re-conceptualize moral shame and to set moral shame apart from dimensions of subordination, humiliation, and disgrace. The interdisciplinary collection starts with a contribution from a Yazidi-survivor of genocidal and sexual violence, whose case brings together core themes: gender, ethnic and religious identity, and violence and shame. Further accounts of shame and gendered violence in this collection take the reader to other and equally disturbing accounts of lesser-known atrocities from around the world. Although shame is sometimes posited as an inevitable companion to human life, editors Lenart Škof and Shé M. Hawke situate the discussion in the theoretical landscape of shame, and the contributors challenge this concept through fields as diverse as law, journalism, activism, philosophy, theology, ecofeminism, and gender and cultural studies. Their discussion of gendered shame makes room for it to be both a negative and a redemptive concept. Combining junior and senior scholarship, this collection examines power relations in the cycle of shame and violence.