Schaamte

Ik ben aan het lezen over schaamte. Marx en Deleuze/Guattari zien er prachtige dingen in. Marx:

The mantle of liberalism has been discarded and the most disgusting despotism in all its nakedness is disclosed to the eyes of the whole world.

That, too, is a revelation, although one of the opposite kind. It is a truth which, at least, teaches us to recognise the emptiness of our patriotism and the abnormity of our state system, and makes us hide our faces in shame. You look at me with a smile and ask: What is gained by that? No revolution is "made out of shame". I reply: Shame is already revolution of a kind; shame is actually the victory of the French Revolution over the German patriotism that defeated it in 1813. Shame is a kind of anger which is turned inward. And if a whole nation really experienced a sense of shame, it would be like a lion, crouching ready to spring.
(Brief aan Ruge, 1843)

Deleuze/Guattari:

We also experience it in insignificant conditions, before the meanness and vulgarity of existence that haunts democracies, before the propagation of these modes of existence and of thought-for-the-market, and before the values, ideals, and opinions of our time. The ignominy of the possibilities of life that we are offered appears from within. We do not feel ourselves outside of our time but continue to undergo shameful compromises with it. This feeling is one of philosophy's most powerful motifs.
(Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?)

(De schaamte in het Engels te lezen!) Wat het meest opvalt: de schaamte betreft niet zozeer "ons" als wel een contingente bepaling van dat "ons": Duitser, eigentijds... Maar sommige compromissen sluit je niet met je tijd maar met jezelf. De ene helft met de andere helft, opdat er een geheel is. Een schandelijk geheel.