Shame and the social self

The first book of the three volumes comprising The Civilizing Process, originally published by Norbert Elias in 1939 (Elias 1978), gives a leading role to the internalization of shame as a central determinant of modern social life. Drawing on literary texts and etiquette manuals inherited from feudal times through to court society, Elias argues that the ‘civilizing process’ is, at its most basic level, the existential process of becoming increasingly self-conscious regarding personal behaviour and bodily function, which evolved in Europe over a period of many centuries. A central characteristic of the civilizing process is the relationship between the upper classes and the social rules they progressively assigned to bodily function, and the psychical process which correspondingly emerged as the broader population felt increasingly compelled to uphold and sustain them. A significant outcome of the civilizing process is an increase in anxiety experienced at the level of the individual, symptomatic of the internalization of shame, which Elias correlates to the fear of social exclusion should the culturally agreed upon sanctions surrounding bodily comportment be breached. The rules surrounding the body and its management are not fixed; rather, they are constantly modified and attuned to shifts in cultural preference. As Elias (1978:xiii) writes, ‘The standard of what society demands and prohibits changes; in conjunction with this, the threshold of socially instilled displeasure and fear moves; and the question of sociogenic fears thus emerges as one of the central problems of the civilizing process’. Significantly, Elias nominates fear and anxiety as emotionally and socially implicated in the individualized management of shame, embodied interaction and wider social structure. This anxiety has, moreover, developed in response to the rules regarding bodily comportment becoming increasingly defined. Members of the aristocratic classes were the first arbiters of manners and corporeal management. With their demise, Elias, in agreement with Freud, nominates intergenerational socialization and its locus, the family, as the primary site where sensibilities relating to the acceptability of bodily management are learned, embodied, regulated and reproduced. The first part of this chapter considers the theory of shame advanced by Elias before returning to participant accounts to examine how his ideas might be utilized to develop an understanding of the way in which shame is implicated in the experiences of

those who undertake cosmetic surgery. In exploring emergent themes from participants’ accounts, distinct correlations with those presented by the anthropologist Mary Douglas (1966) were noted and her work is introduced in an attempt to develop a more complex understanding of the relationship between shame, gender and cosmetic surgery. Firstly we begin with Elias’ (1978) formulation of the ‘civilizing process’ to

determine how shame has emerged as a significant feature of that process. History and demographic movement are centrally important to Elias’ theoretical formulation. Fundamental to the civilizing process he proposes has been the spatial distancing of humans from nature incurred in the demographic transition from pastoral to urban living. A consequence of that shift has been an overarching project to distance humans from their pasts or, more literally, their pastoral origins, when human and animal coexistence occurred in much closer juxtaposition. Elias claims that ‘people, in the course of the civilizing process, seek to suppress in themselves every characteristic that they feel to be “animal”’ (1978:120). This has occurred gradually over many centuries by the sequestering of socially undesirable, instinctive or impulsive behaviour to the privatized backstage of social life. Etiquette manuals examined by Elias demonstrate how aversion became attached to those behaviours evaluated to be ill-mannered. Indeed, from the earliest-known poem on table manners, written in the thirteenth century, an ordering of behaviours is evident: ‘Those who stand up and snort disgustingly over the dishes like swine belong with other farmyard beasts’; snorting like a salmon and gobbling like a badger are deemed improper; to slurp from a spoon is ‘bestial’ and drinking while eating is something only animals do (cited in Elias 1978:85-86). Similar themes are repeated in etiquette manuals centuries later and are, of course, recognizable today as the familiar reprimands applied to those who breach table manners, usually children. Nose blowing, flatulence, where and when not to spit, how to behave when sharing an inn room with a stranger, and responding appropriately when encountering someone defecating in public are some of the topics which receive the attention of the etiquette authors whom Elias consults. Over time, as people’s living arrangements shifted from agrarian to urban settings, an increasing emphasis was placed on the spatial contexts of interpersonal relationships and how individuals managed and controlled the parameters of their bodies. Elias (1978) explains the adoption of the manners and affectations of the

court by the lower classes as an aspirational trend which had its genesis in the demise of the aristocracy. The apprehension and utilization of manners was gradually embraced by the middle classes in the eighteenth century as the power of the aristocracy weakened and interaction with an emergent and increasingly wealthy bourgeoisie occurred. Until that time manners, in the form of grammar, table etiquette and physical comportment, were learned symbolic representations of class which encapsulated and preserved the position of the ruling elite (Elias 1978:101). The diminishing paternalism of the court also brought a shift in the responsibility for socializing the children of the

aristocracy. This had been the domain of the court but, with its dismantling, the role shifted increasingly to parents. Of considerable significance to Elias’ (1978) argument is a short volume, On

Civility in Children, written by Erasmus of Rotterdam around 1530. Reprinted up to one hundred and thirty times, the most recent in the eighteenth century, and translated into English, German, French and Czech, this book was considered an influential manual for grooming the sons of the aristocracy. As with earlier manuals there is advice on table manners, washing one’s hands before eating, wiping one’s mouth before drinking, wiping the rim of a goblet before passing it on and not dipping bread that had already been bitten into the serving platter. It is, perhaps, important to recall that eating was a communal act which, prior to extensive cutlery and crockery manufacture in the sixteenth century, involved sharing from a communal dish and drinking from a goblet that was also shared. Rules around eating demanded the consideration of those with whom one dined, and explicit regulation of the transmission of body fluids was stipulated long before the discoveries of bacteriology became the motivation to modify such behaviours. Erasmus draws a sharp distinction between those who can control their behaviour at the table and those who cannot. He savagely derided the behaviour of the latter as that of the inelegant or the insane: scratching, spitting and snorting ‘comes from a rustic embarrassment and looks like a form of madness’ (Erasmus in Elias 1978:57-58). Lack of control and insanity are interconnected in lay interpretations today and continue to carry the same connotations. From the table to the bedchamber, Erasmus writes with a frankness that might well be embarrassing to contemporary societies, further underscoring the way the more ‘primitive’ aspects of corporeality have become selectively private topics of conversation. In his examination of influential etiquette texts, Elias (1978) uncovers repeated

themes which prompt him to argue that judicial evaluations surrounding the most permeable regions of the body’s margins have resulted in an evolving repugnance at uncontrolled bodily function which has, over many centuries, increased self-consciousness surrounding the body. This self-consciousness has subsequently been internalized at the level of the individual, manifesting in an advancing of the threshold of shame directed towards the body. The body has, in turn, evolved symbolically as a site upon which self-control is assessed and displayed. Concomitantly, at a wider societal level, discussions of bodily function have increasingly become prohibited and consequently repressed. Indeed, what Elias attempts to illustrate is

how constraints through others from a variety of angles are converted into self-restraints, how the more animalic human activities are progressively thrust behind the scenes of men’s communal social life and invested with feelings of shame, how the regulation of the whole instinctual and affective life by steady self-control becomes more and more stable.