THE SCENE OF HUMILIATION

Abstract

Embarrassment, shame and humiliation form a spectrum of negative emotions that are both self-conscious and other-regarding. This paper studies this spectrum to understand humiliation. Conventional studies on humiliation presuppose intersubjective mediation between the self and the other and a visceral disapproval of humiliation. This negative or symbolic relation between emotion and ethics has its root in the inability of modern practical reason to propose a theory of ethics. Based on Abhinavagupta and Damasio this paper proposes to look at emotions as impersonal, ownerless and desubjectivised. Emotion is the management of the supplementary nature of the self. Fandry, a Marathi film reveals the scene of humiliation as that of the hunt where intersubjective relations remain suspended.