UE56 - Shame, guilt and hatred : an emotional perspective on the public sphere

Intervenant·e·s

• Eva Illouz [référent·e]   directrice d'études, EHESS / Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique (CESSP)

 In 1965, Karl Jaspers famously accused his fellow Germans. “Almost the entire world indicts Germany and the Germans. Our guilt is discussed in terms of outrage, horror, hatred and scorn. Punishment and retribution are desired, not by the victors alone but also by some of the German emigres and even by citizens of neutral countries. In Germany there are some who admit guilt, including their own, and many who hold themselves guiltless but pronounce others guilty.” What seems obvious to us today – Germans were guilty of the Holocaust—was far from obvious at the time Jaspers was writing these lines. In fact, it took a great deal of symbolic work for Germans to be convinced.

This example illustrates the premise of this seminar: namely that shame, guilt, and hatred are constructed, negotiated, and contested in the public sphere and that they represent the unwelcome intrusion of moral claims in it. On the basis of the empirical analysis of texts provided by students and analyzed in class, we will explore how these three emotions play a key role in the construction of memory, how they affect the relationships between majority and minority in democracies, how they are used to account for history (for example the Shoah and colonialism). The ultimate aim of the course is to interrogate the construction of a minority discourse in democracies.