Abstract
In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag broaches the subject of
photography of atrocities, pondering how spectators would respond to images
of suffering. While it is believed that people look askance at painful images
because sympathy for others makes them refrain from looking, Sontag
contends that sympathy can be “an impertinent—if not an
inappropriate—response” (102). What then is the “pertinent” response that
Sontag has in mind? It seems that the emotion of shame, compared with
sympathy, is not that impertinent a response as it enables us to reflect on “how
our privileges are located on the same map as their suffering, and may—in
ways we might prefer not to imagine—be linked to their suffering” (103).
What can be inferred from Sontag’s argument is that shame may anticipate the
possibility of change. Nevertheless, she does not explain why exposure to
distressing or appalling images would evoke shameful emotions, nor does she
further investigate whether the affect of shame can create conditions under
which moral action becomes possible. To fill the lacunae in Sontag’s discourse
and accentuate the political dimension of shame to which it vaguely points,
this paper seeks to analyze the mechanism of shame and its relation to the gaze
from a Lacanian perspective. In the first two sections of this paper, I will
elucidate why the emotion of shame arises when images of suffering are seen,
or, to be more precise, are seeing us. Moreover, I will deal with Lacan’s
proposal of “making ashamed” and discuss in what sense shame can become a
blessing. While the distressing photographs Sontag addresses are mainly
concerned with the pain of human others, the third section of this paper also
ventures to explore whether the viewer will be made ashamed by the pain of
animal others. I will examine how animal cruelty is represented in Taiwan’s
media coverage, with a view to answering the following question: What kinds
of images are able to make the spectator feel ashamed and call for a halt to cruelty?