The Podcast for Social Research · The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research

Political Humiliation, Collective Struggle: A Conversation with Roxanne Euben

·1 hr 29 min·5 clips

Abu Ghraib made humiliation visible, but no one at the time could define what they meant by it.

1. The Podcast for Social Research episode centers on Roxanne Euben’s book, Driven to Their Knees, Humiliation in Contemporary Politics. 2. Suzanne Schneider hosts with Ajay Singh Chaudhary, and Euben joins as the author of a Princeton University Press book on humiliation in politics. 3. The episode asks what humiliation means, how people use the term, and why it keeps appearing in politics across Abu Ghraib, ISIS, and Trump. 4. Schneider opens with December 2020 headlines from Unheard, Fox News, HuffPo, and Alternet that use humiliation language about Donald Trump, King Charles, Kash Patel, and Republicans. 5. She also mentions a search that turned up dozens of humiliation headlines about football, which leads into the book’s claim that humiliation appears with striking frequency. 6. Euben says the project began when Abu Ghraib photographs circulated in 2004 and many observers agreed humiliation was involved. 7. She recalls Seymour Hersh’s reporting on interrogation torture and the circulation of Raphael Patai’s Arab mind among neoconservatives. 8. Euben says she saw the same rhetoric again in ISIS propaganda and in Islamist political thought, including repeated claims that 9/11 humiliated the United States. 9. She says the book grew out of a genealogy of Islamist understandings of humiliation, but the work eventually told her, “this is not about Islam.” 10. Euben argues that the real subject is language and rhetoric, including textual, visual, and embodied forms of expression. 11. Schneider summarizes the book’s working definition as “the imposition of impotence by those who undeservedly have the power to do so.” 12. Euben says the etymologies in Arabic, German, and biblical Hebrew point downward, toward being pushed lower or made to “eat dirt.” 13. She distinguishes humiliation from mere powerlessness by stressing that it feels intolerable, egregious, and in need of correction. 14. Schneider raises retaliatory humiliation, Fanon, and the idea that restoring dignity may involve humiliating the humiliator. 15. Euben answers that power is gendered, and that even emancipatory gestures often remain tied to gender norms. 16. She uses Egypt in 2011 to show that women’s and men’s protest roles still invoked protection, vulnerability, and masculinity. 17. Schneider reads a long passage about Egyptians protecting each other, Christians and Muslims covering one another’s backs, and citizens telling stories of the living and the dead. 18. Euben responds that she is careful about words like “care” and “dignity,” and says she is not offering political science predictions. 19. The conversation has a seminar style with long answers, detailed follow-ups, and a serious but occasionally ironic tone. 20. Listeners interested in comparative political theory, Islamism, Egypt, and affect will likely stay engaged; listeners wanting short, purely descriptive overviews may not.

As heard by us

A deliberate conversation about humiliation, circulation, and what survives defeat.

This episode follows a careful discussion of humiliation in politics, with Roxanne Euben and the hosts moving from theory to cases like Abu Ghraib and ISIS.

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Why you'd press play

You want a serious conversation about humiliation that stays anchored in Abu Ghraib photographs and the circulation of ISIS videos.

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