Anatomy of Shame. Stanley Cavell’s Reading of King Lear

This text deals with Stanley Cavell’s approach to the problem of skepticism in his reading of William Shakespeare’s King Lear, contained in the essay The Avoidance of Love.2 The originality of this proposition lies in the fact that the motivation for Lear’s behavior is considered impenetrable, incomprehensible even to himself. In other words, Lear does not understand his own behavior in the first scene of the play – his attitude of rejection and disapproval of Cordelia’s conduct, expressed in his attitude of Avoidance (refusal) – triggering his anger, and thus, setting in motion the mechanism of action. At the same time, Avoidance stems from Lear’s refusal of the love he feels for Cordelia – this love, opening up the horizon of possibilities that are the domain of psychoanalysis, violates social taboos and elicits in Lear an attitude of denial and refusal. In rejecting Cordelia’s love (and his own love for Cordelia), Lear turns out to be a narcissistic skeptic, seeking to avoid the sense of dependence on the Other, which is one of the risks of love.