Abstract
This chapter explores criminological and queer engagements with the concept of shame, suggesting that such work constitutes a productive area for future queer criminological scholarship. It notes that there has been a double absence of queer shame from criminology—neither shame’s potentially injurious effects on queers, nor its productive queer potential beyond crime control, have been considered. Criminology is largely concerned with governing shame, in stark contrast to queer scholarship, which is concerned with exploring the productive and disruptive potential of shame. The chapter argues that drawing queer insights on shame into criminology can highlight new possibilities for engaging with, and disrupting, criminal justice practices, and explore whether there is any queer political potential in the use of shame within criminology and criminal justice.
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Notes
- 1.
There are a number of other ways in which criminological researchers have explored shame, which future queer criminological scholarship could consider further. For example, a body of work investigates, and critiques, the use of ‘disintegrative’ approaches to shaming (Edwards 2008; Karp 2000; Pratt 2003), while another considers the ways in which one’s experience of shame (for being a victim of intimate partner violence, or for being unable to meet one’s personal expectations or responsibilities as a result of unemployment, for example) influences one’s encounters with the criminal justice system, or one’s involvement in criminal behaviour (by reducing their likelihood of seeking help, or by manifesting in violence, respectively) (Ray et al. 2004; Mills 2008).
- 2.
In these dynamics, one might notice similar strains as those discussed in Chapter 8, in a turn to negativity and refusal. These engagements with ‘backwardness’ are attempts to shape some sort of queer future, and to do so away from the heteronormative imperative to reproduce and the optimism of futurity (Love 2007, 147).
- 3.
Additionally, the response to being shamed is not necessarily to renounce the object in which one is interested. This means that it is always possible for that mutual gaze to be refused again, and further shame experienced (Sedgwick 2003, 117).
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Ball, M. (2016). Queer Shame and Criminology. In: Criminology and Queer Theory. Critical Criminological Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-45328-0_9
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