Thus spoke the student from Bologna: On behalf of the blush and confusion

Abstract

To the extent that philosophy deals with the blush, it is almost always as the pink blush of shame. Such is philosophy’s seeming obsession with the latter, there remains the risk of something important being lost in translation when it comes to those examples in the literature that mention the blush. I intend to focus on one such example, a scene from Robert Antelme’s The Human Race, the story of the student from Bologna, in which Antelme describes the student’s blushing response to being randomly selected by an SS soldier from a bedraggled line of prisoners for a roadside execution. I will turn to Lisa Guenther and Giorgio Agamben for their reading of Antelme’s account, not, I should stress, to evaluate their respective analyses of shame, but that which may have been overlooked as a result, namely confusion. I will turn also to Jean-Paul Sartre, again, not in relation to shame, rather for his brief, but no less important, phenomenological account of blushing. I will refer to recent social psychology research suggesting that confusion is a knowledge emotion – something like embarrassment (as aporia). All this in support of the argument, that when Antelme writes of the student – ‘Il a l’air confus’ (‘He seems confused’), we are bound to take them both, the student and Antelme, the blusher and the beholder, at their word – to maintain our distance so that the scene might speak for itself and in so doing reveal signs of life.

Keywords

confusion emotions the blush

To him who has knowledge, man himself is “the animal with red cheeks.” – Nietzsche¹

It is the very essence of the emotion of pity that it strips away from the suffering of others whatever is distinctly personal […] one simply knows nothing of the whole inner sequence and intricacies that are distress for me or for you – Nietzsche²

Introduction

It is not for nothing I begin with Nietzsche. He reminds me that when I finally arrive at the scene – the story of the student from Bologna – my approach will be one where I remember to keep my distance. To approach in this way suggests that I can never quite announce my arrival if such is defined by a conclusion about which I am certain. That said, I intend to argue there is much to be gained by taking Robert Antelme and the student at their word. The problem is that in the case of the latter he does not speak, or rather it is his body that cries out and in so doing reveals signs of life. To assist with interpreting these signs, I will turn to recent social psychology research. I am concerned that much has already been lost in philosophy’s translation when it comes to this particular scene. By relying on both science and philosophy, I hope to come nearer ‘in quality or character’, I might even begin to resemble the blushing student from Bologna.³

It is beyond the scope of this article, but it is worth considering that such an approach suggests an ethics of the blush. To witness the other’s blush is, at the very least, to bear witness to their suffering; indeed, it is suggestive of bearing something of their suffering. It was none other than Charles Darwin who noted that blushing ‘makes the blusher to suffer and the beholder uncomfortable, without being of the least service to either of them’.⁴ I am not so sure I agree with Darwin’s sentiment. Mindful once more of Nietzsche, I want to suggest that there is something to be gained from dwelling in discomfort; more, an ethics of the blush suggests that in the presence of the other I am often confused – confounded by my sudden knowledge that to be me in the world is, in some important way, to be you.⁵

To find the courage to dwell in discomfort is also an appeal to the reader, the witness, the beholder of the blush. When we finally arrive at the scene, we remember this story is an account, not just of the blusher but of the beholder also. In the role of the latter, we are called upon to walk a fine line between suffering and pity. We are to keep Nietzsche’s words in mind when we finally come upon the blushing body with its busy hands by the side of the road:

I know just as certainly that I only need to expose myself to the sight of some genuine distress and I am lost. And if a suffering friend said to me, “Look, I am about to die; please promise me to die with me,” I should promise it.⁶

The risk, according to Nietzsche, is that along with this promise will come a sense of pity that not only threatens the potential of this moment to reveal something of itself; I am also in danger of losing my ‘own way’.⁷ In Ecce Homo, in the section ‘Why Am I So Wise’, Nietzsche revisits this thought:

I reproach those who are full of pity for easily losing a sense of shame, of respect, of sensitivity for distances […] sometimes pitying hands can interfere in a downright destructive manner in a great destiny, in the growing solitude of one wounded, in a privileged right to heavy guilt.⁸

I will bear this in mind, especially when I arrive at the scene, the story of the student from Bologna, the one whose blush betrays a solitude intensified by the certain knowledge that he alone from among the others is about to die. But first, I wish to explore accounts of both the blush and confusion, what I will otherwise refer to as embarrassment (as aporia), in the hope this will go some way in reclaiming that which has been lost in translation.

The blush and confusion

Paul Silvia, a current researcher in social psychology, recognises that ‘many emotion psychologists’ might have difficulty accepting the idea of confusion as an emotion.⁹ Notwithstanding, Silvia argues that confusion (alongside surprise and awe) belongs in the ‘family of knowledge emotions’, which are ‘caused by people’s beliefs about their thoughts and knowledge’.¹⁰ Silvia suggests that even if one does not wish to count confusion, strictly speaking, as an emotion, it is ‘an interesting mental state […] a metacognitive signal […] [that] informs people that they do not comprehend what is happening and that some shift in action is thus needed’.¹¹ Silvia further suggests that confusion signals ‘an impasse in information processing’ that may lead to withdrawal; the cause of this impasse comes from being overwhelmed by complex stimuli which are experienced as confusing, precisely because they are incomprehensible.¹² There is something of a double movement here. That something is incomprehensible is, at some level, and in the first instance, comprehended as such. It is this lack of comprehension, or more precisely, the sudden comprehension of the incomprehensible, that is of most interest to me.

Within the above context, let us now consider Jean-Paul Sartre’s account of the blush. According to Sartre, to say that I feel myself blushing is inaccurate; insofar as I am attempting to describe my state, Sartre suggests that what I really mean is that I am ‘vividly and constantly conscious of […] [my] body not as it is for […] [me] but as it is for the Other’.¹³ Sartre further suggests that this sensation can cause erythrophobia (a pathological fear of blushing). Such pathologies, according to Sartre, ‘are nothing but the horrified metaphysical apprehension of the existence of my body for the Others’.¹⁴ Sartre goes further; when blushing, I might say that I am embarrassed by my body; but Sartre points out that this would be incorrect, as ‘I cannot be embarrassed by my own body as I exist it’.¹⁵ It is worth citing Sartre at some length on this point:

It is my body as it is for the Other which may embarrass me. Yet there too the expression is not a happy one, for I can be embarrassed only by a concrete thing which is present inside my universe […]. Here the embarrassment is more subtle, for what constrains me is absent. I never encounter my body-for-the-Other as an obstacle; on the contrary, it is because my body is never there, because it remains inapprehensible that it can be constraining.¹⁶

Two things are worth noting: first, by Sartre’s account, the blush is affectively the apprehension of the inapprehensible; second, Sartre appears not to be (initially at least) referring to embarrassment as an emotion, rather embarras speaks to that which is an obstacle, namely my body-for-the-Other. And yet it is clear that this meaning does not entirely satisfy Sartre. In her translation of this passage, Hazel Barnes takes gêne and gênant to be alluding to hindrance as well as constraint. I am not sure this adequately captures the sense of unease or awkwardness that I believe Sartre is endeavouring to convey. While gêne and gênant refer, among other things, to embarrassment, gêne can also be translated as malaise (a general feeling of discomfort or unease whose exact cause is difficult to identify); gênant, which Sartre stresses, also alludes to that which is disturbing.¹⁷ We might now say (mindful once more of Silvia), in response to complex stimuli I may well blush, betraying the moment I affectively and effectively apprehend the inapprehensible. An impasse presents itself, overwhelmed and unsure of how to respond, I experience this lack of comprehension as something like confusion.

Why now, something like confusion? Elliot Jurist, another current researcher specialising in emotions, argues that we should focus on these ‘states of not being sure of what […] [we] are feeling’, if we are to more accurately account for ‘how emotions are lived’.¹⁸ Jurist argues that these feelings eluding easy definition can be defined as ‘aporetic emotions’, meaning they ‘are vague and lack sharp specificity [and] manifest themselves when we feel something but we are not sure what it is’.¹⁹ Jurist goes on to argue that our ‘effort to fathom those feelings seems directionless or blocked’.²⁰ Now recall that Silvia suggests confusion signals ‘an impasse in information processing’; impasse speaks to a dead end, a blind alley; it also alludes to the sense of aporia suggested by Jurist. All this harks back to Sartre’s account, insofar as aporetic emotions appear to (literally) embarrass me by blocking my attempt at gaining a clearer understanding of exactly what it is I am feeling, a feeling that in the first instance reflects something of my malaise, something of my confusion at this state of affairs.

Malaise speaks to a sense of becoming undone. It is in becoming (to approach, to come near in time), that the moment reveals itself as yet to come, and yet come it must. Within this context, confusion, embarrassment (as aporia), alludes to the presentiment of my imminent undoing. It is as if my blushing body, now no longer my own, is living out the moment prior to its occurrence. To this end, I want to suggest that the blush gets its sting because it communicates something of this aporia, my confusion at the certain knowledge that I am about to be undone. And yet it would seem that all is not lost, for aporia promises something like a beginning.

Jacques Derrida refers to aporia, as this ‘old, worn-out Greek term […] this tired word of philosophy and of logic’, a word about which all he knows before he begins is ‘not knowing where to go’.²¹ Derrida wonders:

Can one speak – and if so, in what sense – of an experience of the aporia? An experience of the aporia as such? Or vice versa: Is an experience possible that would not be an experience of the aporia?²²

Derrida suggests that ‘the affirmation that announc[es] itself through a negative form […] [is] therefore the necessity of experience itself, the experience of the aporia’.²³ Derrida, referring to a note he made on Heidegger’s Being and Time, alludes to a sense of aporia ‘as being, and above all of nonbeing, more precisely of a certain impossibility as nonviability, as nontrack or barred path […] the impossible or the impracticable’.²⁴ Derrida draws our attention to Aristotle’s use of diaporeõ, which Derrida translates as ‘I’m stuck (dans l’embarras) [I’m embarrassed], I cannot get out, I’m helpless’.²⁵ Elsewhere, Derrida laments – ‘I do not know where to begin to mark out this assemblage, this graph, of differance’.²⁶ Here, Derrida emphasises begin, no doubt to highlight its etymological grounding in aporia, suggestive of ‘a doubting or being at a loss where to begin, or what to say, on account of the variety of the matter’.²⁷ Not knowing where to begin suggests, at the very least, knowledge of beginning.

In sum, the blush that communicates confusion, embarrassment (as aporia), suggests that I do not comprehend what is happening. Overwhelmed by this impasse, my body is suddenly no longer my own, as if it were, by virtue of its remaining momentarily inapprehensible, mirroring my lack of comprehension. A shift occurs, or is it more accurate to say, an emotion is born of this moment marked by that which appears firstly as an obstacle. I feel something, but I cannot be sure what it is. This negative ‘experience of the aporia’ affirms itself now as knowledge of what it means to begin, and until it is Death that finally speaks, then beginning, I would argue, cannot help but express itself. The stage is now set – the scene, the story of the student from Bologna, in which Death plays its part as impasse par excellence, and yet is not death but rather signs of life that haunt Antelme’s account.

Thus spoke the student from Bologna

Why this relatively unknown scene of violence (and shame) from among all the others that inhabit philosophy (and religion)? Why not, for example, the original scene, shame’s origin story, set in a garden in which a man and a woman know nakedness for the first time and are ashamed – surely, they blushed? If so, then Genesis tells us it was knowledge that was the first cause of ‘the animal with red cheeks’, but knowledge of what?²⁸ Were these first two moral animals already possessed of a complex notion of self and therefore able to experience a complex self-conscious emotion like shame? I am more inclined towards the intuition that now they were suddenly (morally) conscious of their unruly and unregulatable bodies; now that they were for the first time embarrassed by their bodies, insofar as their bodies were momentarily no longer their own but ‘for-the-Other’; in the face of these complex stimuli they blushed, betraying the moment they affectively and effectively apprehended the inapprehensible. This lack of comprehension surely felt something like confusion, and yet for many this is the story of shame. As such, shame has a confidence possessed by that which is certain of its story and therefore its place in the world; more, it assumes a normative heft, a moral gravitas that, at best, threatens to obfuscate the ‘intricacies that are distress for me or for you’; at worst, convinced by my own (mis)understanding that it is shame at the centre of this story, I venture to speak for the Other and in the process deny them their ‘great destiny’.

So when a story comes along, a scene in which we are told that the body before us seems confused, I ask myself – why not take the blusher and the beholder, at their word; why not dwell awhile in their discomfort? And if we are to invite an emotion to the table, let us at the very least agree that it defies easy definition, an ‘aporetic emotion’ then; in this state of not being sure what anyone is feeling, we are venturing towards a more nuanced account of ‘how emotions are lived’ – how life is lived. To assume it is shame that haunts the scene, whether it be subjective in the case of Giorgio Agamben, or intersubjective in the case of Lisa Guenther, is to risk speaking with a confidence imbued by the story of shame (I am not suggesting that Agamben or Guenther are relying on Genesis). Is such confidence warranted? Outside the historical context of the scene in question, the roadside execution of the student from Bologna, we are witness to a random act of murder; such acts are committed daily – hourly even. That, as a species, we are so inclined speaks to our moral ambivalence; in any given moment, we are as likely to err as we are to forgive. Is this an example of ‘the inhuman in the human’ as Agamben would have it, ‘the desubjectification of every subject’; or is it more mundane, merely human, all too human?²⁹ To be mundane speaks to belonging to the life of the world (as opposed to the life of the gods), and hence to that which loves the world; that which is haunted by a memory of itself as noble and generous. Here, I am referring to nobility’s grounding in what it means to know; and a generosity that allows the body with its busy hands by the side of the road, blushing from the certain knowledge it is about to die, to speak for itself.

In a section of his memoir titled ‘The Road’, Antelme sets the scene, a column of prisoners on a forced march from Buchenwald to Dachau, under the watchful and yet indifferent gaze of the SS. There is much made by Antelme of not wanting to be seen, of avoiding at all costs a look from the SS that signals you have been chosen for execution. And yet the point of describing this harrowing scene within the broader context of the book is that as witnesses (in this case, to the horrors of war) we are not ‘exempt from the responsibility to see or bear witness’ to such horrors; more, we are bound to.³⁰ By belonging to the species that would inflict such horrors, we are implicated in the suffering of our fellow human beings – in this case, to the suffering of the student from Bologna.

Antelme recalls the following in particular about the student’s response to being randomly chosen for execution:

His face has turned pink. I look at him closely. I still have that pink before my eyes. He stands there at the side of the road. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands either. He seems confused.³¹

So horrified is Antelme at the retelling of this past event that he seeks momentary refuge in the present – ‘I still have that pink before my eyes’. But then something draws him back, the student standing by the side of the road ‘doesn’t know what to do with his hands’. We will return to these busy hands, but for the moment it should be noted that Antelme is reticent to speak for the student when he writes – ‘He seems confused’.³² By filtering his witness through the lens of his impressions rather than imposing his view, Antelme is not only speaking to our sense of aporia, in particular to ‘doubting or being at a loss where to begin, or what to say’, he is effectively honouring the student by allowing the student’s affectivity, his body, to speak for itself.³³

By employing a qualifier when recalling that the student seems confused, in a scene already marked by violence, Antelme is careful to avoid further unnecessary violence by disavowing certainty. It seems that Antelme, the beholder, means not only to mirror something of the blusher’s confusion; he is doing his best, in the aforementioned Nietzschean sense, to maintain his distance, thereby ensuring the student’s suffering finds its own voice in the wordless expression of the blush (and those busy hands). In this way, Antelme does not strip away what is a ‘distinctly personal’ experience for the student by endeavouring to speak for the student (what could be more personal than one’s own death). Antelme’s apparent confusion not only reflects his own distress in the face of what is clearly distressing for the one who is about to die, it also allows the latter’s body to express something like ‘the whole inner sequence’; that which remains beyond language, by way of the blush and those busy hands – these signs of life.

Even though I have stated it is beyond my scope, it bears repeating, there is something ethical about this exchange between blusher and beholder. To this end, Agamben reflects on the scene as described by Antelme:

Why does the student from Bologna blush? It is as if the flush on his cheeks momentarily betrayed a limit that was reached, as if something like a new ethical material were touched upon in the living being.³⁴

According to Agamben, not only is this material beyond the consideration of facts and words, we see the suggestion also of aporia (as limit, the end of the road) announcing the beginning of something like ethics.³⁵ Guenther suggests the blush is material because ‘unlike language […] [it] arises involuntarily, as a physiological reaction to a situation apprehended as meaningful’.³⁶ I am left to wonder why Agamben did not pursue this further, instead, as others have noted, he excises the blush (of confusion) in order to find meaning in this ‘ethical material’ via a reading of shame. I will revisit this last point, more precisely, the three points that make the mark of an ellipsis; that which speaks to a sense of falling short; and would otherwise reflect the mood of the one who beholds the body with its busy hands by the side of the road, were it not wielded by Agamben (and others) to silence the student’s affective response, which Antelme reports as seeming like confusion.

In her article, among other things, Guenther deals with her own as well as Agamben’s reading of the same scene. Like Agamben, Guenther asks of the student – ‘Why does he blush, and what does this blush signify?’³⁷ She wants to resist Agamben’s subjective interrogation of the blushing student, focusing instead on the power of a witness to withstand the humiliation of the desubjectification of being singled out. According to Guenther, a witness alludes to the Other, without which, she argues, the blush would be consigned to oblivion.³⁸ The witness allows the blush to move beyond the moment of desubjectification, to signify nothing less than the blush that binds us in ‘the irreducible relationality of all [blushing] subjects’.³⁹ Guenther suggests that the student’s blush ‘point[s] to an excess of relationality which cannot be contained or reduced […] [the blush] survives [the student’s] death […] as a sign of interhuman relations’.⁴⁰ There is a hint of irony in Guenther’s focus on the blush as a sign, when we consider the latter originally referred to a ‘“gesture or motion of the hand” […] meant to communicate something’. Notwithstanding, by settling on the blush as a sign of relationality at the expense of those busy hands, Guenther is in danger of unintentionally excluding those for whom the blush is not visible and therefore unable to be witnessed as a sign of ‘interhuman relations’ – a sign of human life.

To this end, Guenther focuses on ‘the pink flush […] [that] becomes a sign […] not only of the student’s affective response […] but also of the relation between himself and everyone else who can see, everyone else who has both the capacity and the responsibility to bear witness’.⁴¹ Guenther notes Ruth Leys’ reading of the same scene in which Leys suggests that ‘pink […] emerges as the most vivid figure that Antelme can propose for the absolute similarity or likeness of human beings’.⁴² We can see that ‘the pink flush’ is serving a dual purpose; it reveals us as being-human; importantly, it also serves as a signifier to which the beholder can bear witness to the blusher’s humanity. Once more, the blush is not all that Antelme draws our attention to when he describes the student’s response to being singled out for execution. Antelme, you will recall, makes two observations: the student is blushing, and he does not know what to do with his hands; both lead Antelme to conclude that the student seems confused. To this end, Rom Harré, a prominent social psychology researcher, points out that ‘disorderly gestures’, otherwise expressed by Erving Goffman as ‘busy hands […] are semantically equivalent’ with blushing.⁴³

One might now ask, are busy hands even more reliable than the blush when it comes to bearing witness to the student’s confusion? Let us, with the greatest respect, make the student dark-skinned, better still, let us have him in a hood. Can we continue to suggest that the student’s body seems to be expressing something like confusion? In a word – yes. Questions like this have a long history, going all the way back to Prussian polymath and explorer, Alexander von Humboldt. Both Charles Darwin and London physician Thomas Burgess (the latter was writing extensively on the blush some 30 years prior to Darwin) refer disparagingly to Humboldt’s support of the view that those who cannot be seen to blush ‘know not how to blush’ and therefore cannot be morally trusted. The ‘dark races’ (and those presumably who choose to dress in ways that conceal the face) are therefore, according to Humboldt, incapable of giving ‘external evidence by blushing, of their deep internal feelings’.⁴⁴ My point is, even though it is patently not the case that Guenther and the others wish to exclude anyone from their respective analyses of the blush, they run the risk of doing so with their singular and abiding appeal to ‘the pink flush’. It is an oversight, of sorts, for current readings of the blush to commit this sin of omission. To this end, there seems to be a similar desire to omit confusion (and those busy hands) from the student’s story as well.

But before that, I wish to briefly revisit Leys. In line with my reference to ‘aporetic emotions’, Leys also suggests that the blush ‘cannot be tied to any specific emotion. [According to Leys] all we are entitled to say is that […] pink appears to be an expression of a threatened aliveness or vitality’.⁴⁵ I agree with Leys, insofar as the blush ought not (initially at least) be associated with a specific emotion. More importantly, as I am suggesting that the blush also speaks to the aporia of an obstacle, the impassable, and yet the possibility of beginning; one can think of few greater obstacles than one’s ‘threatened aliveness or vitality’; indeed, for the student from Bologna, it is Death that beckons.

Antelme alludes to the above when he writes, ‘[W]e saw the effect death had upon the Italian. He turned pink’.⁴⁶ Antelme is not referring to death itself but the student’s certain knowledge that he is about to die. It is only after all doubt has vanished, now that he has knowledge of end, that the student blushes from something like confusion.⁴⁷ Certainty now manifests itself as confusion. The blush speaks to the aporia of a world that is suddenly beyond comprehension. In this moment, this presentiment of his imminent undoing, the student’s body becomes undone, which is to say it is no longer his own. Once more, it is as if the student’s body is mirroring the incomprehensibility of death. His blush communicates the sudden apprehension of the inapprehensible. In this way, his body betrays its ambivalence towards being blocked by, as well as living in, a moment that is beyond comprehension, by suddenly becoming busy. This busyness betrays not only the body’s anxiety, its distress, but also its determination, despite everything, to remain engaged – to communicate in the face of certain death, a sense of still belonging to the land of the living by way of these signs of life.⁴⁸

What are these signs, more importantly, have these signs survived or have they been lost in translation? Worse still, have they been omitted? Once again, Antelme observes both the blush and busy hands, leading him to think that the student seems confused. Phil Hutchinson, a philosopher who has written extensively on shame, notes that Agamben’s citation of Antelme stops precisely at his mention of the student’s embarrassment.⁴⁹ Immediately following the line – ‘He doesn’t know what to do with his hands either’ – Agamben wields an ellipsis, effectively silencing what Antelme suggests seems like confusion. I would add that it also silences Antelme’s welcome hesitation in speaking for the student, as discussed already. There is a sense of pathos in Agamben’s assertive use of an ellipsis when we consider that it speaks to ‘falling short’, an expression, no less, of confusion and doubt, both of which ought to haunt any endeavour to speak decisively for the body.

Guenther too recognises the ellipsis as wielded by Agamben. In so doing, she restores the translation of ‘Il a l’air confus’ from ‘He seems embarrassed’ to ‘He seems confused’.⁵⁰ Helpful as it is for my purposes, Guenther does not pursue a reading of confusion, content it appears to pick up on Agamben’s apparent assessment of embarrassment as just another expression of shame. Interestingly, Hutchinson, in his own analysis translates ‘embarrassed’ not as confusion but as embarassé, allowing a slippage of sorts, from what I am calling a knowledge emotion to its more common expression as a self-conscious emotion (shame, in this case).⁵¹ Hutchinson argues that due to his ‘theoretical predilections’ (an analysis of shame), Agamben omits that which is ‘problematic’, namely embarrassment. Hutchinson is questioning Agamben’s apparent assumption that embarrassment and shame are interchangeable when it comes to the expression of complex self-conscious emotions. That is a conversation for another day. Notwithstanding, it is unclear, to this reader at least, that shame is on Antelme’s mind when he writes – ‘Il a l’air confus’. If the student is expressing an emotion, then I am more inclined towards the category of knowledge emotions over self-conscious emotions.

Regarding the difference between self-conscious and knowledge emotions already implied by the above, Silvia argues that to experience self-conscious emotions (like shame, guilt or regret), such ‘a creature must have a sense of self and the ability to reflect upon what the self has done’.⁵² This capacity for self-reflection means that self-conscious emotions are often referred to as complex and ‘are among the last emotions to develop in humans’.⁵³ According to Silvia, from an appraisal point of view, self-conscious emotions relate to how we see events as being in line, or otherwise, with our values and self-image.⁵⁴ Knowledge emotions, on the other hand, relate to our appraisal of what we know, and what we expect to happen; in the case of confusion, it relates to a lack of comprehension in the face of what we now know.⁵⁵ What does the student from Bologna expect to happen – what does he know? Only that he is about to die. His body expresses this lack of comprehension in the face of certain knowledge by way of a further sign, a gesture or motion of his hands that communicates this aporia.

Antelme notes this about the student, his body – ‘He doesn’t know what to do with his hands either’.⁵⁶ Suddenly our attention shifts, along with Antelme’s, from the student’s blushing face to his busy hands. While we are focusing on these busy hands, we return to Hutchinson’s criticism of Agamben’s use of an ellipsis to excise ‘the predication of embarrassment’ from Antelme’s account, so that Agamben might ‘give the impression that Antelme’s writing supports his thesis’.⁵⁷ At the end of the same paragraph in which he makes this point, Hutchinson wields an ellipsis of his own and in so doing excises the student’s busy hands from Antelme’s account. He records that ‘Antelme wrote: “he does not know what to do…”’; Hutchinson wants to argue, contra Agamben, that if the student ‘were ashamed surely he would be concerned with being, not doing’.⁵⁸ Notwithstanding, by using an ellipsis to silence the student’s busy hands, Hutchinson comes close to doing that which he accuses Agamben of; indeed, the student’s busy hands are our best indication yet that we can claim, alongside Antelme, that the student seems confused.

This, finally, brings us back to Sartre, and why it is that when it comes to the story of the student from Bologna, I am less inclined towards complex self-conscious emotions – consciousness in general. Immediately following his aforementioned account of embarrassment, Sartre has this to say:

I seek to reach […] [my body], to master it […] in order to give it the form and the attitude which are appropriate. But it is on principle out of reach […] fixed at a distance from me as my body-for-the-Other. Thus I forever act “blindly,” shoot at a venture without ever knowing the results of my shooting.⁵⁹

By capturing blindly within quotation marks, as well as speaking to the impasse, the seemingly blind alley of aporia, it is enticing to consider that here Sartre is excluding consciousness. The time for projects is over, instead Sartre is alluding to the unconscious actions of, in this case, the blushing body with its busy hands by the side of the road; and yet, it seems that it still has something to say by way of these signs of life. We arrive, essentially, at the same conclusion as Guenther; the blush, those busy hands, survive the student’s death as a sign of interhuman relations, of ethics – of life.

Conclusion

It was not for nothing I began with Nietzsche. This echoes the sentiment of The Ugliest Man, who assures Zarathustra that ‘it is not for nothing’ he is reaching out to him – ‘Stay! Sit down! But do not look at me! In that way honour my ugliness!’⁶⁰ Interestingly, Agamben suggests that the student’s blush ‘is like a mute apostrophe flying through time to reach us, to bear witness to him’.⁶¹ Like an ellipsis, an apostrophe alludes to that which has been omitted, it speaks also to turning away (from the Greek, apostrephein). This evokes a sense of bearing witness that requires courage. In so doing, one is called upon not to omit as such but rather to stay silent for long enough to allow the ‘ugliness’ to speak for itself.

To this end, Antelme honours the student by allowing the latter’s affectivity, his body, to speak for itself by way of the blush and those busy hands – these signs of life. This expression of honour speaks to Nietzsche’s sense of shame (only touched upon), and the danger for such from expressions of pity. Pity, unlike shame, does not know how to let ‘ugliness’ speak for itself; pity desires, above all else, to have its own voice heard. The Ugliest Man praises Zarathustra for his silence, and for the blush that says I will let your suffering speak for itself. It is the blush by which The Ugliest Man recognises Zarathustra.⁶² I am left wondering if Antelme did not himself blush when he witnessed the ‘ugliness’ visited upon the student from Bologna. Bernard Mandeville, a Dutch philosopher writing before even Burgess, suggests ‘that […] blush[ing] for others […] is nothing else but that sometimes we make the case of others too nearly our own’.⁶³ Burgess appears to echo this sentiment by observing that ‘when we see the cheek of an individual suffused with a blush […] immediately our sympathy is excited […] as if we were ourselves concerned, and yet we know not why’.⁶⁴ There is within both these views something of the tension to which I have alluded, which is to say, the ambivalent potential of the blush to ground an ethics, for it speaks to the unconscious expression of ourselves as morally contradictory animals. Such a creature, while it no doubt possess a complex notion of self, it is also, I have argued, all too readily confused in the face of certain knowledge. There is a further tension revealed by these two early thinkers, to which I have also alluded; the potential for us, in the presence of the blushing other, to make their case our own, and in so doing we, intentionally or otherwise, silence their expressions of suffering by speaking for them.

Antelme’s approach, on the other hand, maintains the sense of distance demanded by Nietzschean shame, effectively honouring the student by allowing the student’s affectivity, his body, his suffering, to speak for itself. In this way, Antelme, the beholder, comes nearer in quality or character; one could argue that, by disavowing certainty, by recording only that the student seems confused, Antelme begins to resemble the blushing student from Bologna by ‘mirroring’ the latter’s confusion. In this way, Antelme expresses, or more precisely, he lives something of the student’s experience. One would do well to find a better sign of interhuman relations; Antelme, as the witness, expresses what it means to be him in the world, which is to say, what it seems like to be the student – both of them in this moment haunted by confusion, in the face of the certain knowledge that one of them is about to die.

In response to Antelme’s approach, a question poses itself: has pity clouded the views expressed by those abovementioned; if so, has an altogether more conventional reading of shame been projected onto the blushing student from Bologna; more, does our collective shame around certain historical events, or as Nietzsche puts it, our ‘privileged right to heavy guilt’, risk silencing, even without the banality of an ellipsis, what the blushing body with its busy hands is saying? What is the student from Bologna (his body) saying? According to Antelme, only that he seems confused. This expression of confusion, I have argued, is worthy of being taken at face value. To this end, I have focused on confusion as it relates to a lack of comprehension. I have suggested that the blush (of confusion) is the body affectively communicating this lack, insofar as it is the moment in which my body, now no longer my own, apprehends the inapprehensible. This state of not being sure of what I am feeling not only suggests a more meaningful account of how emotions might be lived, it speaks also to the aporetic nature of these emotions. I suggested that a reading of Derrida speaks to aporia being simultaneously experienced as knowledge of impassability, and the possibility of beginning.

I have argued that the blush of confusion, of embarrassment (as aporia), suggests that I do not comprehend what is happening. Overwhelmed by this impasse, my body is suddenly no longer my own, as if it were, by virtue of its remaining momentarily inapprehensible, mirroring my lack of comprehension. This negative ‘experience of the aporia’ affirms itself now as knowledge of what it means to begin, for until it is Death that finally speaks, then beginning, even if only by way of the blush and those busy hands, these signs of life, cannot help but express itself.

Finally, confusion, a knowledge emotion, offers us the chance to rethink how we approach epistemological concerns more broadly. It is within this context that Antelme makes such a reliable narrator. By disavowing certainty, by mirroring the confusion of the blushing student from Bologna, he bears witness to the ‘ugliest’ expressions of human violence without committing further violence. Antelme has the courage to dwell in discomfort so that suffering might have its own voice. This voice speaks to an ethics of the blush; such an ethics, I have suggested, reveals that in the presence of the other I am often confused – confounded by my sudden knowledge that to be me in the world is, in some important way, to be you. This formulation speaks to Guenther’s intersubjective account of shame; importantly, it also speaks to Antelme’s declaration – ‘You are us’.⁶⁵ There is little doubt that an ethics of the blush, whatever form it takes, relies on the presence of the Other and in so doing speaks to a history of ethics as first philosophy (here, I am referring to Emmanuel Levinas in particular). Perhaps where an ethics of the blush takes its distance, at least in the first instance, is from philosophy itself, obsessed as the latter is with knowledge, none of it certain; and yet, philosophy is an expression of something like a will to certainty. An ethics of the blush is content to dwell in the aporia, the mundanity, of confusion. In this way, it declares itself an ethics of the world – one that loves the morally ambivalent creature at its heart.

The last word was always Nietzsche’s – ‘What would be “beautiful”’, Nietzsche asks, ‘if the contradiction had not first become conscious of itself, if the ugly had not first said to itself: “I am ugly”?’⁶⁶ I am not about to make an ethicist out of Nietzsche; rather, I want to point out that as well as speaking to our moral ambivalence, a contradiction is grounded in what it means to show – to speak. What does the blushing body with its busy hands by the side of the road reveal to us – what does it say? I cannot be certain.

It is nothing if not confusing. It seems however, something like a beginning.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Michael Hearn

Notes

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