“In this elegant, psychologically sharp and richly referenced analysis, Gros shows us how shame, as Marx wrote, ‘is already a revolution of its kind’. In chapters that weave deftly between politics, literature and psychoanalysis, he leads us carefully through the familiar sources of shame (social contempt, moral violence, bodily disgust) to its collective and public iterations (shame at one’s people, or even one’s species). He shows us how it is through embracing shame as a passionate engagement with the world that one escapes its melancholic and disfiguring effects.”
—Richard Seymour, author of Disaster Nationalism
“Equipped with many references to Freud, French classics, and Greek philosophy, Gros attempts to reveal the complexities of human shame by parsing it out into a series of taxonomies such as moral shame, digital shame, and shame rooted in how one is perceived by others”
—Kirkus Reviews
“In cataloguing the varieties of shame, Gros roughly defines it as “an amalgam of sadness and rage,” often rooted in the fear of exposure…Gros hopes to revive it as a force for change, citing Marx: ‘If a whole nation were to feel ashamed it would be like a lion recoiling in order to spring.'”
—Dan Piepenbring, Harper’s Magazine
“An accessible and engaging introduction to philosophical conceptions of shame.”
—Alexander Stern, The Washington Post
“The value of A Philosophy of Shame, however, is that it treats its subject not as something that exists only as an obstacle to be evaded. Gros prompts us to run towards shame rather than to flee it, to reckon with the experience, so that shame might invigorate rather than mortify.”
—Dan Dixon, The Conversation
“An erudite treatise which traces shame’s burden back to Ancient Rome and Lucretia”
—Joseph Teeling, The Whitney Review
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