ABSTRACT
The political effects of shame can be observed on a national and global stage. Shame has political potential as it can provoke a separation between the social conventions demarcated within hegemonic ideals, enabling a re-inscription of social intelligibility. The outcome of this can be radical, instigating social, political and cultural agency amongst the formerly disenfranchised. Investigating the cultural politics of emotion has already been cogently shaped by Sara Ahmed. Ahmed's work focuses on the cultural politics of emotion as they pertain to race hierarchies and ethnicity in contemporary Britain; her excellent study analyses the symbolic axis between White and non-White, a crucible for emotions of all kinds to circulate. Shame is an emotion that can occur momentarily, and intensely, in moments of acute embarrassment and humiliation, it is a transitory feeling experienced intensely in, and on, the body as flushing.
