Writing Shame

Examines the intersection of shame, gender and writing in contemporary literature

Considers the particular intersection of shame, gender and writing in literature produced since the 1990sViews shame as a constitutive factorin the social construction and experience of femininityAnalyses a diverse range of texts from pulp to literary fiction to life writing and autofiction, with a self-reflexive focus on the formal disjunctions produced by/in the writing of shame, and on the shame attending the act of writing itselfOfferspolitical readings of neglected genres (lesbian pulp fiction), highly topical texts (like Kraus's I Love Dick and Knausgaard's My Struggle), and established authors (such as Mary Gaitskill, A.M. Homes, Rupert Thomson)
Through readings of an array of recent texts literary and popular, fictional and autofictional, realist and experimental this book maps out a contemporary, Western, shame culture. It unpicks the complex triangulation of shame, gender and writing, and intervenes forcefully in feminist and queer debates of the last three decades. Starting from the premise that shame cannot be overcome or abandoned, and that femininity and shame are utterly and necessarily imbricated, Writing Shame examines writing that explores and inhabits this state of shame, considering the dissonant effects of such explorations on and beyond the page.

“Kaye Mitchell draws on a fascinating range of contemporary and earlier literary material, as well as feminist and queer theory, psychoanalysis and philosophy; she offers the most compelling and comprehensive, erudite and original account, to date, of an affective experience that is (increasingly) key to the construction of our very being as subjects.”

-- "Patricia Waugh, Durham University"

Kaye Mitchell, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature, University of Manchester.

Examines the intersection of shame, gender and writing in contemporary literatureThrough readings of an array of recent texts - literary and popular, fictional and autofictional, realist and experimental - this book maps out a contemporary, Western, shame culture. It unpicks the complex triangulation of shame, gender and writing, and intervenes forcefully in feminist and queer debates of the last three decades. Starting from the premise that shame cannot be overcome or abandoned, and that femininity and shame are utterly and necessarily imbricated, Writing Shame examines writing that explores and inhabits this state of shame, considering the dissonant effects of such explorations on and beyond the page.Kaye Mitchell is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature at the University of Manchester.

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