Worldly Shame

Does shame have any role in politics? Far too often, shame is used as a weapon to dominate those who lack social power. For which reason, it is often regarded with skepticism by its many critics. But in an era where lying in order to get ahead in political contests seems to go unpunished by voters, where the sale of life-saving drugs is increased to astronomical proportions in the pursuit of profits, and where daily infractions against the dignity of individuals is both widespread and quickly forgotten, the seeming lack of shame threatens to undermine the shared values on which a democratic world depends. Drawing on the political thought of Hannah Arendt, especially her writings on Jewish and world politics, Worldly Shame constructs a political category of shame that can help us respond to the crises of the present moment. “Worldly shame” can return to us our sense of judgment, can be an inducement to action, and is a panacea for a world torn apart by horrors that diminish humanity. By developing a capacity for “worldly shame,” we can create political spaces that are hospitable to a plurality of voices and viewpoints, and which can thus be a bulwark against the world-destroying trends that engulf our world every day.

This series consists of The life and defence of John Foxe, with his Prefaces, Kalender of martyrs, and Acts and monuments.

This book opens up a dialogue between pre-modern women identified as mystics in diverse locations from South Asia to Europe. It considers how women from the disparate religious traditions of Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity expressed devotion in parallel ways. The argument is that women’s mysticism demands to be compared not because of any essential "female" experience of the divine but because the parallel positions of marginalization that pre-modern women experienced led them to deploy intimate encounters with the divine to speak publicly and claim authority. The topics covered range from the Sufi devotional tradition of Sidis (Indians of African ancestry) to the Bhakti poet Mīrābaī and the nuns of Barking Abbey. Collectively the chapters show how mysticism allowed premodern women to speak and act by unsettling traditional gender roles and expectations for religious behavior. At the same time as uncovering connections, the juxtaposition of women from different traditions serves to highlight distinctive features. The book draws on a range of disciplinary expertise and will be of particular interest to scholars of medieval religion and theology as well as history and literary studies.

Preface I explicitly do not affirm the truth of any statement made or implied herein concerning any actual people, including myself; or any actual relationships, including my own; or any concrete situations depicted. Everything I have written is either about or based upon my perceptions, memories, imagining, suppositions, assessments of poetic and dramatic appropriateness, and the like, all such, qua sources of factual truth, being notoriously fallible. The only truth that I do affirm herein is that of the universals that can be abstracted from the particulars of my subjective experience, the universalscall them poetic truthswhereby my audience can better understand and perfect themselves as I, hopefully, have been able to do for myself in the living and subsequent describing of all that follows. If anything I have written happens to occasion any people pain, I express in anticipation my deepest compassion; such people must know, however, that I would not have written as I have if I did not suppose that I would thereby have caused, in potentiality, far greater good than harm. Bear Valley Springs August, 2011