Writing shame : contemporary literature, gender, and negative affect

Examines the intersection of shame, gender and writing in contemporary literature 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. Contents 6 Acknowledgements 7 Introduction: Beginning with Stigma 10 1 Forgetting and Remembering Lesbian Pulp: Shame, Recuperation and Queer History 54 2 Cleaving to the Scene of Shame: Stigmatised Childhoods in The End of Alice and Two Girls, Fat and Thin 106 3 ‘The Dumb Cunt’s Tale’: Desire, Shame and Self-Narration in Contemporary Autofiction 158 4 The Shame of Being a Man: Humiliation and/as Heroism 208 Conclusion: The Shame is (Not) Over 254 Bibliography 264 Index 288