(NOT) ENTERING EVERY ROOM - Exploring autosociobiographies via liminal crossing points of social class and the emotion shame

Barbara Wolfram

(Not) Entering Every Room, conducted 2020/21 at Film Academy Vienna/ mdw - University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna, set out to use the emotion shame as a focus to reveal and explore unconscious liminal crossing points in our biographies and perceptions of social class, building on our previous research on cinematic (auto)sociobiographies (2020). We are shaped, guided and scarred by our socialization and the society surrounding us. Each individual history brings with it a different knowledge repertoire about what belonging or not-belonging, „normal“ or „abnormal“ means. Spoerhase (Politik der Form 2017) describes the exploration and disclosure of one’s own biography in relation to social context & class, to one’s body, time & place of birth as “auto-sociobiographical”. He refers to the literary works of Annie Ernaux or Didier Eribon where individual life stories evoke a collective memory of a certain time and place, revealing liminal experiences of social class. One emotion that was mentioned more often than any other in these literary works, was shame. To explore our own histories of experiences and the attached knowledge repertoire, we used the methodology of collective (auto)sociobiographical exploration via a multi-layered artistic approach. Body work (Chechov, Shdanoff), writing improvisations and group explorations via zoom were used to probe the methodology of (auto)sociobiographical exploration in the light of shame and social class. Research on cinematic (auto)sociobiographies is still very new. We aim at contributing a method of exploration to the field of cinematic form and content production informed by artistic research methods.

Badura, Jens et al. (ed.), Handbuch Künstlerische Forschung, Berlin/Zürich 2015.

Baron, Christian, Ein Mann seiner Klasse, Berlin 2020.

Bayraktar, Mesut, Warum konfrontative Literatur, in: taz. blogs, 14.02.2020.

Biggs, Michael, The role of the artefact in art and design research. International Journal of Design Sciences and Technology. 10 (2), Paris 2022, p. 19-24, http://hdl.handle.net/2299/324.

Brooks, David, Bobos in Paradise. The New Upper Class and How They Got There, New York 2000.

Bourdieu, Pierre, Ein soziologischer Selbstversuch, Frankfurt/Main 2002.

Chekhov, Michael, To the Actor: On the Technique of Acting, Eastford 2014.

Deblinger, Esther and Runyon, Melissa K., Understanding and treating feelings of shame in children who have experienced maltreatment, in: Child Maltreatment, 10/4, 2005, https://doi.org/10.1177/1077559505279306.

Dörre, Klaus and Castel, Robert (ed.), Prekarität, Abstieg, Ausgrenzung: Die soziale Frage am Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt/New York 2009.

Éribon, Didier, Retour à Reims, Paris 2009.

Éribon, Didier, La société comme verdict, Paris 2013.

Ernaux, Annie, Mémoire de fille, Paris 2016.

Ernaux, Annie, Les Années, Paris 2008.

Ernaux, Annie, La Honte, Paris 1997.

Guilluy, Christophe, La France périphérique: Comment on a sacrifié les classes populaires, Paris 2014.

Hamm, Claudia, Oh man. Annie Ernaux und Didier Eribon lesen, in: Merkur, 818, Stuttgart 2018, p. 63-69.

Harder, D.W. and Lewis, S.J., The assessment of shame and guilt, in: Advances in personality assessment, Vol. 6, London 1987, p. 89-114.

Illouz, Eva, Warum Liebe weh tut. Eine soziologische Erklärung, Frankfurt/Main 2011.

Jacquet, Chantal, Zwischen den Klassen. Über die Nicht-Reproduktion sozialer Macht, Konstanz 2018.

Jacquet, Jennifer, Scham. Die politische Kraft eines unterschätzten Gefühls, Frankfurt/Main 2015.

Kitayama, S. et al., Cultural affordances and emotional experience: Socially engaging and disengaging emotions in Japan and the United States, in: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 91(5), 2006, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.5.890.

Koch, Gertrud, Die Gesten des Films, die filmische Geste - Gibt es einen Gestus des Films?, in: Wulf, Christoph (ed), Gesten: Inszenierung, Aufführung, Praxis, München 2010.

Lepecki, André, The Body as Archive: Will to Re-Enact and the Afterlives of Dances, in: Dance Research Journal 42 (2), p. 28-48.

Linck, Dirck, Die Politisierung der Scham. Didier Eribons „Rückkehr nach Reims“, in: Merkur, Nr. 808, Stuttgart 2016, p. 34-47.

Louis, Édouard, Qui a tué mon père?, Paris 2018.

Louis, Édouard, En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule, Paris 2014.

Manow, Philip, Die Politische Ökonomie des Populismus, Frankfurt/Main 2018.

Marks, Stephan, Manuskript zum Seminar Menschenwürde und Scham, online: https://www.krankenhausseelsorge-wuerttemberg.de/fileadmin/mediapool/einrichtungen/E_krankenhausseelsorge/Stephan_Marks_Handout_Scham_und_Wuerde.pdf.

Marks, Stephan, Scham - die tabuisierte Emotion, Mannheim 2018.

Mazic, Naïma - n ï m company, Dance Performance “PoLy-Mirrors, a re-performance of feminine diagonals”, 2021

Petit, Lenard, The Michael Chekhov Handbook for the Actor, New York 2010.

Piketty, Thomas, Kapital und Ideologie, München 2020.

Polanyi, Michael, Implizites Wissen, Frankfurt am Main 1985.

Rancière, Jacques, Thinking between disciplines: an aesthetics of knowledge, in: Parrhesia 1, Melbourne 2006, p. 1-12.

Reckwitz, Andreas, Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten, Berlin 2017.

Richtmeyer, Ulrike, et al. (ed.), Bild und Geste. Figurationen des Denkens in Philosophie und Kunst, Bielefeld 2014.

Russel Hochschild, Arlie, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, New York 2016.

Rothöhler, Simon, Zum Sensory Ethnography Lab an der Harvard University, in: Merkur 771, Stuttgart 2013, p. 720-725.

Scheff, Thomas J., Working Class Emotions and Relationships. Secondary Analysis of Classic Texts by Sennett and Cobb, and Willis, in: Toward a Sociological imagination: Bridging Specialized Fields, Lanham 2002, p.263-292, http://scheff.faculty.soc.ucsb.edu/22.html.

Scheff, Thomas J., Shame and the Social Bond: A Sociological Theory, in: Sociological Theory, Vol. 18/No.1., 2000, p. 84-99, https://doi.org/10.1111/0735-2751.00089.

Sontag, Susan, On Photography, New York 1977.

Spoerhase, Carlos, Politik der Form. Autosoziobiografie als Gesellschaftsanalyse, in: Merkur, Nr. 824, Stuttgart 2017, p. 27-37.

Vance, J.D., Hillbilly-Elegy. A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, New York 2016.

Winker, Gabriele and Degele, Nina, Intersektionalität. Zur Analyse sozialer Ungleichheiten, Bielefeld 2009.

Wolfram, Barbara and Wintersteiger, Christina et al., Confronting Realities - First Steps Working on Cinematic Autosociobiographies, in: International Journal of Film and Media Arts, Vol.5/No.2 GEECT Special Issue: Mapping Artistic Research in Film, Lisboa 2020, p. 100-123, https://doi.org/10.24140/ijfma.v5.n2.06.

Wulf, Christoph (ed.), Gesten: Inszenierung, Aufführung, Praxis, München 2010.

Wurmser, Léon, Die Maske der Scham. Die Psychoanalyse von Schamaffekten und Schamkonflikten, Berlin 1997.

Yalom, Irvin D., Im Hier und Jetzt: Richtlinien der Gruppenpsychotherapie, München 2005.

REFERENCES & THANKS

Introduction

Theoretical Foundation & Starting the Research

Methodology & Process

Discussion & Findings

Many thanks to the AR-Pilot Project Call 2020 of the mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts for funding as well as for their continuous support and encouragement.

Many thanks as well to all the SAR 12th conference attendees for discussing our work and for helping us developing it further.

"It was not like I am finally able to enter all of these rooms, but it feels like I have opened some doors and that from some of these doors the weight was lifted and I can see more clearly."

Video and photo Performance; Wolfram, Wintersteiger, Rezaie, Wolf, 2021

We choose the framing and the order.

"Es ist im Grunde sehr viel klarer."

"And essentially it is much clearer."

Tip

Tip