ABSTRACT
Joan Copjec argues shame is tragically misunderstood to be a “primitive” affect that depends on the approval or disapproval of one’s ancestors while guilt is a “sophisticated” self-regulating internal system of morality. According to Copjec, the world has crudely been divided into “shame” and “guilt” cultures, wherein “shame” cultures are less advanced than “guilt” cultures. She suggests these divisions “are improperly defined as types of cultures; for what they define, rather, is a subject’s relation to her culture” (2006: 13). Culture understood as all of the things (nationality, race, family, ethnicity) that we inherit from our ancestors, “the manner in which we assume this inheritance, and the way we understand what it means to keep faith with it, are, I argue, what determine shame or guilt” (2006: 13).
