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‘People are strange when you’re a stranger’1: shame, the self and
some pathologies of social imagination
Candess Kostopoulos
Department of Philosophy
Cnr Kingsway and University Road
University of Johannesburg
Auckland Park, 2006
Johannesburg, South Africa
candess.kostopoulos@gmail.com
Abstract
In this paper I respond to Samantha Vice’s prescriptions for living
morally as a white person in South Africa today. I allow that her
‘How do I live in this strange place?’ (2010) is convincing when read
– probably against intent – as a descriptive account. It fails, though,
in its attempt to provide an attractive set of moral prescriptions. I set
out an argument against both shame and silence, focussing primarily
on shame as I contend that the need to withdraw or keep silent fol-
lows from feeling ashamed. I argue that shame is experienced as a
diminution of the self, whereas guilt is experienced as a burdening of
the self by wrongful behaviour; the diminution of the self in shame
experiences is intrinsically harmful, and instead of enabling the self
to be moral, actually inhibits the moral instincts of a person by cut-
ting the self off from other selves. In a group context this type of sev-
erance has unhealthy moral features, as well as negative conse-
quences for inter-group relations.
Introduction
This paper forms part of a response to the debate on ‘whiteliness’ instigated by
Samantha Vice in her controversial paper, ‘How do I live in this strange place?’
(2010). Vice asks how ‘white people can be and live well’ (2010:323) in a land such
as South Africa; or, in other words, how whites ought to deal morally with the fact that
they were, and more tellingly, still are being privileged by the oppression of others.
Vice proposes both an emotional and a ‘practical’ moral reaction, with the practical
being primed by the emotional. Three candidate emotions are considered and weighed
for moral appropriateness, namely: (1) guilt; (2) agent-regret; (3) and shame. Vice opts
for shame as the most appropriate moral emotion to experience in the face of a prob-
lematic ‘whiteliness’. Although guilt and agent-regret are also appropriate, only shame
captures the emotional experiences of a self implicated or ‘stained’ by immorality.
White privilege, or ‘whiteliness’, says Vice (2010:329; my emphasis), ‘does not attach
1 This phrase is from The Doors’ song ‘People are strange’. I would like to thank prof. Jim Olthuis for
kindly corresponding with me on this difficult and personal topic.
302 S. Afr. J. Philos. 2012, 31(2)
merely to what one does or how one benefits, but, more fundamentally, to who one is’.
This is so because whiteliness entails both habituation and necessary moral damage on
Vice’s account (see 2010:324-326); being white thus means that one’s very self is
‘constituted by injustices’ even if one does not want to and/or did not choose to be un-
justly privileged (Vice 2010:330). The ‘gap’ that opens up in a morally aware and ra-
tional person upon realizing that they are not as they want or ought to be, constitutes
the moral emotion of shame (Vice 2010:329; 339).
The question now becomes what one ought to do morally with feelings of shame.
Vice argues that one should not ‘take solace in the thought that at least we are sensi-
tive and caring enough to feel shame’ (Vice 2010:329), or actively cultivate our feel-
ings of guilt, shame and regret (2010:333). One should, however, ‘accept and live with
shame’ (Vice 2010:329); meaning that one ought to both acknowledge and continually
remain aware of ‘oneself as always … privileged and existing in a world that accom-
modates one at the expense of others’ (Vice 2010:329). In practice, this entails that
whites should direct their moral attention towards their selves in a ‘private project of
self-improvement’ (Vice 2010:334-335). Whites ought to be careful,humble and si-
lent in the public realm, given the ‘necessary self-vigilance’ entailed by shame. Once
shamefully aware of their ‘damaging presence’ (Vice 2010:335), whites ought to make
themselves ‘invisible and unheard’, living ‘as quietly and decently as possible’ (Vice
2010:335). Although Vice admits that she is not entirely sure whether silence is indeed
the appropriate practical response to a shameful awareness of moral taintedness, she
does eventually endorse a political silence (2010:337). This silence is not passive or
deaf to other voices (2010:335), and it does not preclude conversation or advocate ac-
quiescence in the face of injustice (2010:336, 338). It is, rather, an active silence in the
political realm, which entails actively and consciously preventing one’s ‘whitely per-
spective’ from damaging others in these spaces, which are where ‘whiteness is most
problematic and charged’, according to Vice (2010:337).
Vice’s moral proposals have mostly been met with negative criticism. Some of it –
mostly in the popular press – is of a degraded and unthinking sort to which I subse-
quently pay no attention here. The more intellectually forthcoming and thorough criti-
cisms that I’ve read seem to me mostly focussed on the issue of silence2(the third part
of Vice’s argument). There are also some responses that focus on the first part of
Vice’s paper and set out arguments against the idea of continued privilege and/or cast
the issue in terms of a privilege as such3. In this paper I would like to focus on the en-
dorsement of shame as both an appropriate and – especially – as the most appropriate
emotional response to continued unjust privilege and habituated ‘whiteliness’. I per-
sonally do not find the endorsement of shame morally convincing or appealing; and I
am sceptical of, what seems to me, the generally unwarranted proffering of ‘obvious’
moral stature to this emotion4.
2 Cf. Lawrence Blum’s ‘Antiracist Moral Identities, or Iris Murdoch in South Africa’ (2011); and
Eusebius McKaizer’s ‘How Whites Should Live in This Strange Place’ (2011). Alison Bailey’s ‘On
White Shame and Vulnerability’ (2011); Andrea Hurst’s ‘This White ‘I’: The Reciprocal Shame of Op-
pressor and Oppressed’ (2011); and Bruce Janz’s ‘Shame and Silence’ either give ‘kinder’ criticisms of,
or provide amendments to Vice’s argument.
3 Cf. Charles Villet’s ‘How do we live in this strange place? Post-apartheid South Africa as heterotopia’
(2012).
4 Charles Mills is also critical of Vice’s promotion of shame in his ‘Vice’s Vicious Virtues: The Super-
erogatory as Obligatory’ (2011). He argues that Vice erroneously makes the supererogatory obligatory,
I will defend my doubts by drawing on recent research findings in empirical psy-
chology that underscore my intuition that shame is (mostly) unwarranted as a strictly
moral emotion. I proceed with a philosophical argument – drawn from the work of
Paul Ricoeur – on the nature of shame, and on its place in our moral vocabularies and
sensitivities. I argue that our individual moral emotions are intimately tied to our abil-
ity to imagine both our selves and others, and to the ability to imagine the social
bond(s) between self and other. On my account shame (even when experienced indi-
vidually) functions as a social emotion that signals the threat of social exclusion –a
threat that leaves the self with only two possibilities: withdrawal/submission, or ag-
gression/retaliation. Shame, described in this way, can be plotted onto the grid Ricoeur
provides for the operation of social imagination. It then becomes an emotion which
signals the self’s ultimate (submissive or aggressive) retreat back into the folds of an
exclusivist group. Our most urgent task as white South Africans, I argue, cannot be to
retreat back into our own group; it consist, rather, of moving outside of ourselves in an
attempt to forge genuine relations with non-white South Africans.
The ‘hidden costs’ of shame
The so-called ‘self-conscious emotions’ – shame, guilt, embarrassment, hubris and
pride – are central to psychological functioning. Yet, they have only recently begun to
receive serious theoretical and empirical attention from emotion researchers (Tracy &
Robins 2007:4). This lag can be attributed to the fact that self-conscious emotions are
not basic; meaning that, unlike anger, fear, disgust, sadness, happiness and surprise,
self-conscious emotions are not unambiguously biological, not shared with other ani-
mals, not panculturally experienced nor identifiable via discrete, universally recog-
nized facial expressions (Tracy & Robins 2007:4). Although the ‘basicness’ of our ba-
sic emotions makes them easier to study, psychologists have become increasingly at-
tracted to the challenge of studying the self-conscious emotions as well. The result has
been a rich repository of thought-provoking theories and findings that I find well
worth the while of any moral philosopher5. I would consequently like to highlight
some of the most relevant research findings on the self-conscious emotions. I will only
focus on the most important recent psychological research findings pertaining to
shame, seeing as this particular self-conscious emotion is my main concern in this
paper.
Shame has mostly been studied together with guilt. The distinction between shame
and guilt has, however, been notoriously fuzzy (Tangney, Struewig & Mashek
2007:25). After the appearance of H.B. Lewis’ Shame and guilt in neurosis (1971)
emotion researchers started to realise that shame could be distinguished from guilt by a
difference in the focus on the self. Most theorists currently agree that the distinction
S. Afr. J. Philos. 2012, 31(2) 303
and therefore constructs an ‘unrealistic schedule’ of virtues. I will offer a different argument against
shame in this paper.
5 Reference to ‘empirical findings’ in a philosophical argument can make the argument vulnerable to
‘cherry picking’. I want to stress that the empirical studies I read on shame and guilt consistently re-
ported the so-called ‘hidden costs’ of shame. T.J. Ferguson, D. Brugman, J. White, and H.L. Eyre’s
‘Shame and guilt as morally warranted experiences’ (2007) is one of the few papers that defend shame
and raise some doubts about methodological issues in previous research on shame and guilt. The paper
concludes with an argument for ‘shame infused guilt’, which is a concept I am open to exploring in fur-
ther work, but that does not really detract from, or imply a challenge to the specific arguments I set out
in this paper.
304 S. Afr. J. Philos. 2012, 31(2)
between shame and guilt centres on the object of negative evaluation and disapproval.
When the object of negative evaluation and disapproval is the global and stable self,
shame is elicited; whereas guilt is elicited when the object of negative evaluation and
disapproval is a specific behaviour or action taken by the self (see Lewis, 2000;
Tangney & Dearing 2002; Tangney et al. 2007). It is this differential emphasis on self
(‘Idid that horrible thing’) versus behaviour (‘I did that horrible thing’) that distin-
guishes shame from guilt, and solicits the concomitantly distinct experiences associ-
ated with these emotions. Shame is, on average, experienced as more painful than
guilt; and is typically accompanied by a sense of shrinking or ‘feeling small’, and by a
sense of worthlessness and powerlessness. Guilt, on the other hand, is typically experi-
ences as less painful and threatening; and is more often accompanied by the feeling of
a self being burdened, or being forced to carry something heavy (Tangney et al.
2007:25).
The distinction Vice makes between shame and guilt is similar to the theoretical dis-
tinction emotion researchers have come to prefer. In fact, her reasons for privileging
shame as a moral emotion hinges on shame being ‘the recognition that one ought not
to be as one is’ (Vice 2010:329; my emphasis); in other words, it depends on the fact
that shame involves a negative evaluation of the global self as opposed to ‘merely’ in-
volving a negative evaluation of some specific behaviour. This, of course, makes per-
fect sense given Vice’s emphasis on the involuntary nature of privilege. We can, in
fact, ‘only feel shame’ as she puts it (2010:329), when confronted with a self impli-
cated and ‘stained’ by injustice because shame actually is the emotion one feels when
one attributes moral (or any other) failures to internal, stable, uncontrollable and
global features of the self.
But what happens when a self experiences shame in the face of wrongdoing
(whether moral, or not)? It seems that the moral worthiness of shame is overblown
when compared to guilt. Empirical research strongly suggests that guilt is, on balance,
a more adaptive emotion than shame. Five lines of research, in fact, illustrate the adap-
tive functions of guilt, in contrast to what Tangney et al. (2007:26) call ‘the hidden
costs of shame’. In this paper I will only discuss, very briefly, three of these major
clusters of research findings6, seeing as they most directly pertain to the themes I am
discussing here.
The first important research finding is that shame more often than not motivates ef-
forts to deny, hide from, or escape the shame-inducing experience, whereas guilt often
motivates reparative action (see Lewis 1971; Lindsay-Hartz 1984; Tangney & Dearing
2002; Tracy & Robins 2006). If failure represents a stable, global shortcoming of the
self, the adaptive solution simply seems to be to withdraw and avoid repeated attempts
at success which could further reveal the self’s inadequacies. If a failure however en-
tails internal, unstable and controllable attributions, the self is motivated to either re-
pair a wrong or increase future efforts at success (Tracy & Robins 2007:15).
The second important cluster of research findings suggest that feelings of shame ac-
tually disrupt individuals’ ability to form empathic connections with others (both at the
level of emotion disposition and emotional state), whereas guilt is associated with
‘other-oriented empathy’ (see Joireman 2004; Leith & Baumeister 1998; Tangney &
6 The two lines of research I leave out pertain to the findings that shame-proneness is related to a variety
of psychological symptoms, whereas guilt-proneness is not; and that there is virtually no evidence for
the presumed moral function of shame as a deterrent of illegal or immoral behaviour (Tangney et al.
2007:27-28).
Dearing 2002). In addition, a third cluster of research findings show that a robust link
exists between shame and anger, as well as between shame and the propensity to
blame others (see Bennett, Sullivan & Lewis 2005; Harper & Arias 2004; Tangney &
Dearing 2002); guilt-proneness, on the other hand, has been consistently associated
with constructive responses to anger (such as non-hostile discussion) and a general
disinclination toward aggression (see Tangney, Wagner, Hill-Barlow, Marschall &
Gramzow 1996; Tangney et al. 2007).
It seems that shame has such high ‘hidden costs’ because it is an emotion borne of
an experience of essential powerlessness. If I do something wrong or immoral and I
realize that it is something about me as a person, something deep-seated and un-
changeable, which is to blame for my mistakes, I can easily become overwhelmed by
psychologically painful feelings of shame. The action tendencies that accompany
shame aim at relieving the self of the psychological torment inherent in helplessness.
Withdrawal and avoidance help the self to escape from the scenes of its own failure, as
well as forestalling future failure. And anger and hostility can help the self to restore
its own sense of worth, rebounding shame in order to blame others for one’s own
failures.
I assume (and take it to be uncontroversial) that any morally sensitive person would
choose to withdraw from the scene of their own moral failure if, and when such a fail-
ure was brought about by stable, uncontrollable and global features of their selves. I
subsequently find Vice’s move from shame to silence persuasive and coherent: if one
agrees that whites ought to feel shame, one must agree to heed the call for silence as
well.
Self-consciousness, sociability and the moral emotions
We often say that someone ‘ought to feel ashamed of themselves’ when they’ve com-
mitted a morally heinous act. Being ashamed of who one is, or reflecting on one’s
character or person when confronted by a moral failure seems (to me at least) a rather
uncontroversial part of most our philosophies of morality. It also seems to make quite
a lot of sense that one would retreat from and avoid situations of moral failure where
one knew failure to be in some sense preordained. Perhaps shame is only detrimental
when met by ego defences that hinge on anger and aggression?
I argue that the most important reason we have for doubting the moral worth of
shame lies in the reported link between shame and disrupted other-oriented empathy.
In order to defend this claim, I will explore the link between morality and the self-con-
scious emotions. If we have a more thoroughgoing understanding of what exactly
makes self-conscious emotions moral emotions, we can begin to understand that
shame has an important and pernicious shadow-side.
The self-conscious emotions are, as we’ve already seen, not ‘basic’. What this
means, in more detail, is that they require a high level of self-awareness and self-repre-
sentation. Hence the self-conscious emotions develop later in childhood, facilitate the
attainment of complex social goals and are cognitively complex (Tracy & Robins
2007:4). Morality starts to factor into this developmental equation because the cogni-
tive complexity of the self-conscious emotions allows them to become provoked by
self-reflection and self-evaluation. We can both anticipate our own shame and/or guilt
in relation to a projected failure, and we can experience actual shame and/or guilt as a
consequence of moral failing (Tangney et al. 2007:21-22). It is when the self thinks
S. Afr. J. Philos. 2012, 31(2) 305
306 S. Afr. J. Philos. 2012, 31(2)
about and evaluates herself that the so-called ‘moral emotions’ arise. We then no lon-
ger need others to tell or show us that we did something wrong, and we longer need
simply to fear the wrath some form of authority in order for us to know wrong and de-
sire right.
This seems a slightly solipsistic affair; yet the moral emotions are constitutively tied
to the self’s sociability. The self that self-reflects and self-evaluates is evolutionary
primed to be sociable, it is a ‘social self’ capable of reacting to ‘other people’s real,
implied, or imagined judgements’ (Leary 2007:45; my emphasis). One can say that the
‘morality’ contained in the moral emotions is that of a self who is capable of being so-
ciable on its own. We often act in morally decent ways because we are able to antici-
pate and experience moral emotions on our own, meaning – as well – that the moral
agent need not always be ‘out there’ or ‘in the thick of things’ to be good.
But how do selves achieve this type of sociability? I would like to suggest that the
human faculty of imagination is central to both the development and functioning of
self-consciousness and the moral emotions. Human beings have the remarkable ability
to imagine themselves and others and to experience some form of emotion because of
these (and many other) imaginings. In an essay on the development of self-reflective
emotions, psychologist Mark Leary (2007) distinguishes three evolved abilities that
enable human beings to experience self-conscious or moral emotions, namely: (1) the
ability to extend the self by reflecting on the past and contemplating the future; (2) the
ability to form a private self with access to private, subjective information; (3) and the
ability to conceptualize or symbolize the self, which involves the capacity for abstract,
symbolic self-thought (Leary 2007:40-41). Although these three ‘selves’ require dif-
ferent types of cognitions, they are all basically tied to the power of imagination.
Our extended self is conditioned by our ability to imaginatively deal with experi-
ences of time; our private self by our ability to imagine how we are, or are likely to be
perceived and evaluated by others; and our conceptual/symbolic self by our ability to
imagine cultural standards as they apply to us (see Leary 2007:42-48). These various
‘imaginings’ allow us to ruminate on the past and to anticipate the future, to ‘see’ our-
selves through the eyes of other people and to represent our own group or culture even
when we are alone. These imaginings give rise to powerful feelings and emotions: we
can become anxious about our anticipated future, obsess over the past, feel embar-
rassed in the company of others, and feel proud or ashamed of a collective. Our
thoughts and our feelings, it seems, are not ontologically cleaved; it is our very ability
to think abstractly about the self via our imagination that also allows us to experience
intense emotions such as shame.
The powerful emotional incentives and deterrents that arise from our self-relevant
thoughts facilitate the internalization of moral standards, codes and – perhaps most im-
portantly – sensitivities. Mark Leary (2007) argues that this link between self-con-
sciousness and the moral emotions means that our self-relevant thoughts exist not so
that we can compare an actual to an ideal self, but so that we can think about other
peoples’ perceptions and evaluations of our selves. Guilt and shame (as well as embar-
rassment, hubris and pride) thus require an intense consciousness of self but evolved in
order to facilitate a sophisticated awareness of others, and to therefore facilitate our
social interactions and relationships (see Baumeister, Stillwell & Heatherton 1994;
Keltner & Beer 2004; Leary 2007).
If the self-conscious emotions are, as Leary (2007:46) suggests, ‘more strongly tied
to what we think other people might think of us than to what we think of ourselves’,
we need to revise our definition of shame somewhat. Shame is a negative evaluation
of (the stable, uncontrollable, and global) the self that is based on the real and/or imag-
ined disapproval of others. When we experience shame we perceive and/or imagine
another person or persons’ disapproval of, or disgust at our very being. The negative
self-evaluations entailed in shame experiences are of a stable, uncontrollable and
global self as seen through the (oftentimes imagined) eyes of the other.
We need shame in order to register and develop sensitivity towards the social bond
and to forestall social threats. Emotion researchers consistently report that shame is the
‘premier social emotion’ (Gilbert in Gruenewald, Dickerson & Kemeny 2007:68), see-
ing as the negative self-evaluations entailed in shame experiences signal our response
to perceptions of low social attention, low social attractiveness, declining social status
and social exclusion (Gruenewald et al., 2007:68). Guilt, on the other hand, is the
more probable emotional response when behavioural violations of social standards (ly-
ing, for instance) take place (see Keltner & Buswell 1996). This means that guilt is
emotionally more focused on specific, moral wrongs and on those who were affected
by the self’s illicit behaviour. Thus we often feel ashamed if someone hints at (or we
imagine) our selves being socially unacceptable in some way (being fat or ugly, for
example) whereas we seldom – if ever – feel guilty about being perceived in a lowly
social manner.
The differential emphasis on self and behaviour that distinguishes shame from guilt
consequently shows up another interesting difference between these two emotions: the
self-focus involved in shame is tied to social status, esteem and inclusion; and the be-
havioural-focus involved in guilt, to social codes and standards of morality. The
shadow-side of shame start to disclose itself here: its ‘withdraw–or–retaliate’ action
tendency serves to protect a social self that is almost completely concerned with its
own social status and safety. Both individual and vicarious (or ‘group’) shame cut the
self off in some way from another person (or group) by mobilizing the self’s psycho-
logical resources for ‘own use’. Genuine pro-social and benevolent moral agency, of
which we are (I believe always) capable, is therefore not to be sought in the cultiva-
tion7of shame. In addition, I would like to argue that shame and the diminution of the
self entailed by it, is especially harmful (and perhaps even morally pernicious) in cases
where the self has no real social contact with the other(s) she perceives as a social
threat.
Paul Ricoeur and the ‘pathologies’ of the social imagination
The negative self-evaluations entailed in shame experiences are, as we’ve seen, nega-
tive evaluation of a stable, uncontrollable and global self as it is ‘seen’ through the
eyes of the other. The imaginative capacities involved in this process constitute it, but
also make it particularly vulnerable. Our ‘mind-reading’ abilities are both limited and
fallible; and the social threats we register via shame can therefore be misread and mis-
judged8.
S. Afr. J. Philos. 2012, 31(2) 307
7 At most, shame ought to function as a type of existential ‘signal’ or ‘prompt’ urging us to examine our-
selves in a way that leads to truthful accounts of our own guilt/being-guilty. Fleshing out this, more
‘constructive’, version of ‘shame’ – or, another concept close to it – remains work to be done in a sepa-
rate article, though. I refer to reader, once again, to T.J. Ferguson et al.’s ‘Shame and guilt as morally
warranted experiences’ (2007).
8 This is an important factor to keep in mind when reflecting on the current situation in South Africa, for
although apartheid officially ended almost two decades ago most white South Africans (especially those
308 S. Afr. J. Philos. 2012, 31(2)
The concept of the (social) imagination can, then, be used to imply both ‘transcen-
dence’ – allowing us to move beyond what is given in sensation and/or capable in
‘pure’ thought – and ‘criticism’ – luring us too far beyond what is real and/or rational
(Voice 2006:284). For Paul Ricoeur the ‘ambiguities and aporias’ we find on the level
of the social imaginary, arise out of their ‘original starting point’, or out of the consti-
tution of imagination as such (2007:169). In his well-known essay9on the possibilities
of extending the ‘linguistic’ imagination (employed in his theory of metaphor10)be
-
yond the sphere of discourse to the ‘sphere of action’, Ricoeur defends the view that
the ‘ambiguities’ we run into when reflecting on imagination are not simply draw-
backs of a given theory of imagination but ‘are constitutive of the very phenomenon of
imagination’ (Ricoeur 2007:169). I do not have space here to give a detailed account
of Ricoeur’s philosophy of imagination. I therefore mention only the conceptual
‘graph’ he employs to plot various theories of imagination on in order to provide some
background for his own theory of social imagination.
Ricoeur’s ‘graph’ of imagination theories attempts to capture what he sees as the
four major uses of the term ‘imagination’. The first (‘noematic’) axis of his graph is
related to the object of the imagining consciousness, and the second one to the subject
who imagines (2007:170). Along the first axis run the opposing theories of the ‘image’
as either ‘presence’ or ‘absence’. What Ricoeur has in mind here, are ‘presence’ theo-
rists (Hume, for instance) who view imagined content as faded or weakened percep-
tion (or ‘presence’), and ‘absence’ theorists (like Sartre) who conceive of imagined
content in terms of absence itself, or as essentially ‘other-than-present’ (Ricoeur
2007:170). The second (or ‘noetic’) axis of Ricoeur’s graph next distributes theories
that vary according to ‘degree of belief’ (Ricoeur 2007:170-171). At one end we find
the ‘fascinated consciousness’ as conceived in theories that posit imagined content as
illusions that confuse or mislead us (Pascal’s denunciation of ‘the power of lies and er-
rors’, for instance), and on the other end we find theories where critical distance is
fully conscious of itself – the so-called ‘critical consciousness’ theories (such as
Husserl’s transcendental reduction, for example11). Rival theories of the imagination
have their origin, Ricoeur suggests (2007:170), in the way they ‘spilt themselves’
along the different lines of his graphs depending.
Ricoeur, however, wants to work out a philosophy of imagination that is wide-rang-
ing as well as plastic enough to account for the aporetic imagination itself. His theory
of the social imagination presents a type of culmination of this endeavour, as it is here
that he brings his insights into ‘work’ of the imagination as it reveals itself in meta-
phor and narrative to full fruition. The ambiguity of imagination is manifested at the
social level via two different ‘imaginative practices’: ideology and utopia (Ricoeur
2007:181). The bond or ‘analogical tie’ that constitutes the social, ‘that makes every
man my brother’ (Ricoeur 2007:181), can only ‘become accessible to us’ through
ideology–utopia, Ricoeur argues (2007:181).
Why is this? In Ricoeur’s account, ideology and utopia presents us with imaginative
variations on the theme of social power. At it’s most obvious, social power refers to,
who live outside the major urban areas) still live relatively cordoned off from the majority of non-white
South Africans.
9 Cf. ‘Imagination in discourse and in action’ (2007).
10 Cf. Ricoeur’s, The rule of metaphor: multi-disciplinary studies in the creation of meaning in language
(1978).
11 All examples are Ricoeur’s own examples.
and entails, the state’s and other state sanctioned authorities’ monopoly on the power
of punishment; less obvious, but more fundamental however, is the (almost completely
hegemonic) power of social inclusion and exclusion. The fulfilment and dissatisfaction
of our social needs (both in term of ‘distribution’ and ‘recognition’12) hinge on various
mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. All authority seeks to legitimize itself in some
way, and therefore relies on the genuine desire of individuals to be included in its
reach so that the gap that always exists between power and consent can be ‘shrunk’
(Ricoeur 2007:183). Ideology and utopia then operate (in polar fashions) under the
auspices of various imaginary variations on the theme of social power and
inclusion–exclusion.
What ideology does is to imaginatively ‘bind’ the social group together whereas uto-
pia imaginatively ‘expands’ the social group. It is here, however, that a second ambi-
guity is revealed with regards to the social imagination: each imaginative practice also
contains a polarity ‘within’, seeing as both ideology and utopia can be split into
‘healthy’ or ‘pathological’ variants (Ricoeur 2007:181). The healthy function of utopia
consists in the imaginative dispersal of current ossified power relations, and the con-
comitant re-imaging of a new social order where novel possibilities of sociality may
lie in wait (Ricoeur 2007:184).
Proceeding from a spatial-temporal ‘nowhere’ (implied in the ‘u-topos’), the utopian
imagination projects an ‘absence’ of which it is fully and critically conscious into the
future. As is the case in narrative fiction, this abolishment of reference to the real,
present world acts as ‘the negative condition’ for the release of a ‘second-order refer-
ential power’ which is capable of re-describing reality and of thereby opening-up new
possibilities for living and acting in the world (Ricoeur 2007:174-175 & 184; see also
Ricoeur 1991). The healthy function of utopia is thus to ‘expose the undeclared sur-
plus value of authority and unmask the pretence common to all systems of legitimacy’
(Ricoeur 2007:184), and to offer us ‘other’ ways of exercising power in the social
group. The ‘mad dream’, as Ricoeur (2007:185) phrases it, which ensues if this projec-
tion of an absence into the future is without any warrant whatsoever begets the patho-
logical side of utopia – a social ‘schizophrenia’ which subordinates reality to dreams,
fixates on perfection and ignores the ‘work of time’ (Ricoeur 2007:185).
The madness of a pathological utopia dreams up a social world without power or ex-
clusion. It is to this schizophrenic vision of the social world that the healthy function
of ideology responds to in a corrective manner: the imaginative practice of ideology
searches for what is and tries to integrate and ‘fill in’ the various voids and gaps of so-
cial life. There are some forms of authority and some types of exclusion that are war-
ranted and essential, and the integrative function of ideology serves to make this avail-
able to us. The integration effected by ideology can, as we unfortunately know too
well, quickly become petrified. The ossified social bond then oppresses, illegitimately
excludes and smothers any type of dissidence, thereby stifling all that is new, hopeful
and alternative.
I argue that we can plot shame onto Ricoeur model of the social imagination because
it is, as I’ve been at pains to point out, a pre-eminently social emotion. The self who
feels shame is a self who feels socially threatened in some way; this means that the
shamed self perceives a very specific threat, namely the threat of social exclusion.
Afraid that it might be rejected and misrecognized, or barred from the redistribution of
S. Afr. J. Philos. 2012, 31(2) 309
12 Cf. Nancy Fraser’s Tanner Lecture, ‘Social justice in the age of identity politics: redistribution, recogni-
tion and participation’ (1996).
310 S. Afr. J. Philos. 2012, 31(2)
goods, the self either retreats or retaliates. Both these action tendencies however imply
that no real changes in or of the self are being considered; and in the case of vicarious
shame this means that the experience of shame enforces the current social bond.
Shame is ideological in the sense that it hegemonically compels the self to adhere to
socially acceptable behaviour; and where the self is shamed vicariously, the shame ex-
perience compels it to either withdraw and act submissively towards the group that
threatens it, or to mobilize the group it belongs to in an effort to retaliate against and to
counter another, menacing group.
If, and when, white South Africans reflect on the injustices of past (and on the way
it still affects the present and most probably will the future) they perhaps cannot help
but feel a sense of shame. If I were black what would I think, and how would I feel
about whites? It is not difficult to see why whites can (and probably have reason to)
‘fill in’ the gaps here; we can and very often do imagine non-white South Africans be-
ing disgusted at us personally for being representatives of a cruel system we ourselves
may never even have taken part in upholding. This feeling of shame, however, draws
us back into the folds of ‘whiteness’ and expels all non-white South Africans into that
insidious group we call ‘the Others’.
Afraid that we might be rejected, scoffed at or despised by non-whites and/or that
what material and cultural goods have been accrued to us will be taken away, we be-
come deeply ashamed. Some of us may feel a pressing desire to get away completely,
others may want to make themselves ‘invisible and unheard’, living ‘as quietly and de-
cently as possible’ (Vice 2010:335); and others may want to ‘fight back’, to consoli-
date and entrench a group that will be proud and not ashamed of us. None of these op-
tions, however, entail any attempt at reconciling, rebuilding or reconnecting with peo-
ples that an unjust socially engineered system had torn and kept apart for almost a cen-
tury. We cannot mend the moral breaches caused by apartheid by simply ‘keeping to
ourselves’, whether this is done submissively (instead of aggressively) or not. If the
South African social bond ought to include people of all races, then the most important
task faced by all races is to figure out the ways in which this bond can be constituted.
Conclusion
I would like to emphasize that my reflections on Samantha Vice’s ‘How do I live in
this strange place?’ has been an attempt to exercise a distinctly ‘Ricoeurean brand’ of
critical social theory. What is particularly attractive about Ricoeur’s critical theory,
and his work in general, is that it is always fundamentally ‘unfinished’. Ricoeur was
fond of referring to his philosophy as a ‘fractured systematicity’ by means of which he
could seek to effect a range of ‘fragile mediations’ (Villaverde 2006). In line with his
meta-philosophical ideas, he allows the social imagination to also function in this frag-
ile but mediated way. The tension between ideology and utopia is ‘insurmountable’, he
concludes. It can (and must), however, always be mediated in a dialectical movement
that propels us ‘forward’ in a progressively narrowing ‘spiral’ of deepened
understanding (Ricoeur 1986:312).
We take possession of the creative power of the imagination only in a critical
relation with these two figures of of false consciousness [i.e. ideology and uto-
pia]. As though, in order to cure the folly of utopia, we had to call upon the
‘healthy’ function of ideology, and as though the critique of ideologies could
only be conducted by a consciousness capable of looking at itself from the per-
spective of ‘nowhere’ (Ricoeur 2007:187).
If we look at the ‘ideology of shame’ from the vantage point of an as-of-yet un-recon-
ciled South Africa we can see a still pertinent ossification of whiteness at the heart of
it. In its most obvious guise, this ossification is the face of a renewed ‘white pride’;
and in it’s less obvious guise, it is a submissiveness that signals obedience to a new
authority that frightens ‘us’ very much. ‘White shame’ can easily become a cover-up
for real guilt; it can also covertly entrench whiteness by using ‘submissiveness’ as ap-
peasement, thereby safeguarding the vast cultural and economic resources white South
Africans continue to enjoy.
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