Kristen Stewart
Dr. Zuzanna Szatanik (Professor of Gender Studies and Literature) |
.....We discussed, for example, how real thinkers and progressives have been targeted both in the United States and in Europe for being creative in terms of the activist tactics. In this respect, Zuza’s and mine work very much intersect because not only does our work attempt to uncover hidden ideological power (class-struggle, racism, sexism, lookism etc.) but how that power is used to reproduce oppressive conditions for other marginalized and oppressed voices. What is perhaps even more disturbing is how pretend progressives (people who identify themselves as victims of social and political oppression) will use strategies to shame other oppressed groups in the name of self-righteous “justice”. Often groups who deploy these heavy-handed strategies of “shame” are themselves members of highly privileged and powerful groups even though they perceive themselves as victims.
What is brilliant about Zuza’s book, De-shamed. Feminist strategies of transgression. The case of Lorna Crozier´s poetry, is that it demonstrates a very clear and compelling argument for how shame can be traversed precisely by giving voice to women. By allowing (or risking) women to voice their shame they are able to trans-gress the power that shame has had over them. As a consequence of voicing shame–women can be liberated from the power that shame has had over them both psychologically and socially (symbolically). What I especially like about the basic matrix of this book is that this same “de-shaming” strategy can be used to liberate other perceived acts of shame; indeed Zuza is brilliant in identifying the logic of shaming itself. MORE
Objet petit a
The Unobtainable Object of Desire
Often when a person in power exacts
their power onto a target (a group or
person) they will use tactics of shame
in order to silence the victim. That is,
they will “frame” the targeted victim in
terms of “shaming” so that the target
(the one who is a victim of sexual
abuse or of a false accusation etc.)
will be too ashamed to speak the truth–
to trans-gress the oppressor by
exposing the oppressor as the true
culprit of injustice. By discovering the
power of “de-shaming” we are able to
expose the oppressor for what they
truly are. But not only are you able to
expose the oppressor you are at the
same time liberated from their
oppressive scheme of “shaming” you.
In this way the one
who feels shame is able to reverse the
table by exposing the truth, even if the
telling of that truth is perceived as
shameful.
Are you beginning to understand the
extraordinary intuitive genius of
Kristen Stewart,
this young woman, this actress, whose
fan you are?
Step back: the pattern in the tapestrywon’t tell itself till more of it is made.Although it’s eighty-seven in the shade,we have to work this hard making the hist-ory we need till, trusting it, we’re freeto kiss each other better than when weimagined kissing when we hadn’t kissed.
Marilyn Hacker in Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons
Now do you imagine what it might have been like to kiss him for a long long time because you didn't dare to find out
Or do you find out and let go of it?
Would you rather your lover wondered in their imagination? For a long long time?
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