The Politics of Humiliation
A Modern History
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:26th Mar '20
Should be back in stock very soon
In a brilliant procession through the last 250 years, Ute Frevert looks at the role that public humiliation has played in modern society, showing how humiliation - and the feeling of shame that it engenders - has been used as a means of coercion and control, from the worlds of politics and international diplomacy through to the education of children and the administration of justice. We learn the stories of the French women whose hair was compulsorily shaven as a punishment for alleged relations with German soldiers during the occupation of France, and of the transgressors in the USA who are made to carry a sign announcing their presence when walking down busy streets. Bringing the story right up to the present, we see how the internet and social media pillorying have made public shaming a ubiquitous phenomenon. Using a multitude of both historical and contemporary examples, Ute Frevert shows how humiliation has been used as a tool over the last 250 years (and how it still is today), a story that reveals remarkable similarities across different times and places. And we see how the art of humiliation is in no way a thing of the past but has been re-invented for the 21st century, in a world where such humiliation is inflicted not from above by the political powers that be but by our social peers.
Frevert, director of the Center for the History of Emotions in Berlin, largely focuses on German history in this book, but she draws in plenty of examples from other countries. At its heart is a desire to understand why people feel the need to humiliate others in public, even one's own children. * Philip Dwyer, University of Newcastle, Australia, European History Quarterly *
the book is well written, thoughtful, and interesting. I much enjoyed reading it. * Prof Samuel Clark, Reviews in History *
...very interesting... * Luigi Lonardo, The International Spectator *
Frevert is not a pessimist. She reminds us that humiliating practices are effective because they have an audience who share the moral code of the aggressor. Once that moral code is denied, the spectacle of cruelty collapses ... the central message of the book is that there are choices to be made: and maintaining the dignity of the more marginalised members of our society is the right one. * Joanna Bourke, Prospect *
Ute Frevert is a brilliant historian, who has brought her tremendous intellectual powers to the subject of humiliation. This is an extraordinary book, and so wide-ranging in the way in which it approaches the subject of humiliation. * James Daybell, Histories of the Unexpected *
From flogging to Facebook, from humiliation administered by the 17th-century state to 21st-century society's self-generated online shaming, from honour to dignity: that is the story of modernity in Ute Frevert's masterful telling. But of course it's less linear, more complicated — and more interesting. A dazzling book, full of surprises. Get a copy and read it. Or shame on you! * Professor Jan Plamper, author of The History of Emotions: An Introduction *
ISBN: 9780198820314
Dimensions: 224mm x 144mm x 35mm
Weight: 464g
352 pages