The dark side of modernity – humiliation as an instrument of power
There is probably no society that abstains from humiliating people – whether in the raising of children, in criminal law or in diplomatic relations. For example, France 1944, women who had relations with German occupying forces had their hair shaven off. Recently, judges in the US punished citizens, forcing them to proclaim their offence by holding a sign on a busy road. Not least thanks to being pilloried by the media and the Internet, public shaming has become omnipresent. In a brilliant walk through 250 years of history, the well-known historian Ute Frevert demonstrates how humiliations were staged and still are today, and shows: Modernity has not got rid of the pillory, but simply reinvented it. It is not the state doing the humiliating, but society.
