Rocks & Sauerborn: Gebotene Scham. Emotionsrepertoires des sozialen Aufstiegs in deutschsprachigen Autosoziobiografien der Gegenwart

Abstract: In the increasingly popular genre of autobiographical texts that place an individual’s life in a socio-economic context (known as Autosoziobiografien in German), shame emerges as a central emotion. This emphasis on shame is evident not only in the texts themselves, but also in literary analyses and feuilletons. However, from a sociological and literary studies perspective we challenge this focus on shame. Drawing on current sociological research on emotions in the context of class mobility and our analysis of three texts – Daniela Dröscherʼs Zeige deine Klasse, Christian Baronʼs Ein Mann seiner Klasse, and Deniz Ohdeʼs Streulicht – we examine how shame has been positioned as the normative core of the emotion repertoire of class mobility. At the same time, we demonstrate that the emotional spectrum of social mobility and its literary representation is far more nuanced and multifaceted than this narrow focus on shame suggests.