This research project surveys and theorises thepolitics of shame in the contemporary Irish context. It identifies the deployment and manipulation of emotions in public discourses, particularly with regard to historically marginalised groups, since the onset of the economic crisis, teasing out the gendered and classed operation of the politics of shame. The project is based at UCD’s Women’s Studies Centre under the supervision of Prof. Ursula Barry, who is an expert on gender, public policy, and economic inequality in Ireland. Building on the applicant’s expertise in gendered shame, the proposed project establishes the role shame plays in the contemporary political setting post-2008 with the introduction of austerity as a policy-response to the economic crisis. Theoretically, there is some work highlighting the increased shame-proneness of traditionally disadvantaged groups, with women seeming to be especially susceptible to experiencing intense levels of shame and being shamed. There is a strong linkage between gender and shame, with a gendered politics of shame being entangled with patriarchal norms concerning women’s bodies and sexuality. What had, thus far, not been theorised with regard to gender and shame, was whether and how gendered shame operates through material disadvantage and poverty. There is some empirical evidence that shame, does, in fact, manifest itself in impoverished populations, and that this may be amplified or at least complicated by gender.
The project contributes to the “knowledge-based economy and society”23 by researching an underexamined context (gendered austerity in Ireland), by uniquely gathering first-person accounts of those disproportionately affected by austerity, by uniquely approaching this context through the lens of affect and emotion, and by developing a unique theoretical framework. It therefore enhances knowledge across several disciplines (political philosophy, feminist economics, social policy, feminist theory), and does so across sectors (given that much of the policy work on the effects of austerity and the economic crisis in Ireland are carried out by NGOs and think tanks).
Research objectives of the project include:
1. Establish whether and how the economic crisis and its fallout in Ireland have been gendered and classed, and
assess initial indications of the potential role shame may have played therein.
2. Record the first-person accounts of marginalised populations who have been disproportionately affected by
austerity measures since 2008.
3. Determine whether and how a politics of shame was experienced and performed by disadvantaged groups,
particularly women, who themselves are subject to shaming in the context of austerity.
4. Probe larger moral and political questions, for instance, concerning citizenship, nation-building, and the state
via the notion of the politics of shame.
5. Undertake a theoretical meta-exploration of affect, addressing questions such as affect’s relationship to
embodiment, and establishing affect’s normative role in feminist moral and political theoretical analyses.
6. Develop research, training and project management skills for current and future projects.
7. Disseminate, to multiple audiences, the first political theoretical analysis of the events and responses to the
economic crisis in Ireland.
