Shame And Writing

Another class I'm taking this semester, "Humiliation" (great name, isn't it?) deals with shame and humiliation in texts. As I've never before written publicly the way that I do on this blog, I thought it might be interesting to share my little experience as a person who writes blogs, in view of the theories and ideas presented in this class of mine. We read a text by Kristeva which was totally over my head and in which I found myself desolately alone, yet I seem to have taken something from it. The shame of the writer with her work.

Note to myself: I first wrote "his" and changed it to "her."

Each blog that I've here written I've at first felt violently adamant about, then decided to put into action, into words of action, then let simmer until all the juices pervaded each corner, and then, after some time, revisited my old flames and felt a pronounced feeling of shock at reading my very own personal words on a page visible to all. As my followers grow, so does my insecurity. A blog that has no followers is not much more than a journal to oneself. A blog, however, that has a following is more of a social consciousness, even if none read it, just to me. So I read my online-published work and I feel shame. I feel ashamed. My thoughts are here for you to read and I'm sure that in a few days time these words that I'm writing now will be the source of a new generation of shame. I'm generating shame.

Though this, on the surface, has no thing* to do with veganism or my movement towards it (I had a wonderfully not-so-vegan lunch that included free-range eggs, but like I stated before, that just happens to be where I draw my vegan line), a little below the surface the truth becomes slightly visible. Part of what shames me into a type of writers-abjection is the subject matter upon which I spew day in and day out. How relevant can eating non-dairy and non-meat products possibly be? How vain am I to believe that this which I heave into this rectangular text box is worthy of the time it'll take out of your life to digest, mentally (even if you don't want to chew the cud, you may be forced to, by exterior forces). Somehow publicly stating my aversion to cruelty to animals carries with it a sense of shame. Shame on me that I cannot turn a blind eye! Shame on me that I will not support that with which I do not agree. Shame on me, and shame on me, and shame I feel. Shame on me for being an island of change in my life. And this has been a wayward blog. And maybe there will be more born of the self same intent and intense-ity. And maybe there won't.