Kalkül der Scham – New Book by Dr. Jürgen Riethmüller

Kalkül der Scham – Der soziale Affekt und das Politische. The new book by Dr. Jürgen Riethmüller, academic researcher in the field of cultural studies, cultural history and text, has been published by Kulturverlag Kadmos.

In “Kalkül der Scham” Jürgen Riethmüller offers an outlook on the historical, psychological, philosophical, psychoanalytical, cultural-theoretical, sociological research on the “silent affect” shame. Against the background of the cultural pluralization processes of the last decades, it can thus be worked out to what extent the current political division of the late neoliberal societies of the West is based on an economy of resentment that points to the disintegrating role of denied recognition and politically instrumentalized shaming.

The theoretical recourse to the inner-psychic-preconsciously processed shame apparatus replaces or supplements classical-economy-based and alternative affect-based explanatory approaches around fear and anger, ultimately all of them new editions of theses of the 1920s and 30s; questionable assumptions of alleged descent fears of an ominous “middle” or a “protest vote,” of renitent yellow vests or the like, but also of the usefulness of shaming in the course of current climate debates are specified.