Writing Shame: Gender, Contemporary Literature and Negative Affect

Through readings of an array of recent texts - literary and popular, fictional and autofictional, realist and experimental - this book maps out a contemporary, Western, shame culture, unpicks the complex triangulation of shame, gender and writing, and intervenes forcefully in feminist and queer debates of the last three decades. Starting from the premise that shame cannot be overcome or abandoned, and that femininity and shame are utterly and necessarily imbricated, it examines writing that explores and inhabits this state of shame, considering the dissonant effects of such explorations on and beyond the page. Foregrounding matters of sexuality, and touching also on questions of race, masculinity and childhood, the book offers sharply political readings of neglected genres (lesbian pulp fiction), highly topical texts (like Kraus's I Love Dick and Knausgaard's My Struggle), and established authors (such as Mary Gaitskill, A.M. Homes, Rupert Thomson) on whom relatively little scholarship exists.