Performed shamelessness and mechanisms of shaming define our age. Yet not long ago, supposedly shameful activities were exhibited through gleeful confessions. The consumption of rom-coms, reality TV, or fast food was framed as “guilty pleasures”. Although often considered self-evident, guilty pleasures prove to be ambivalent or even contradictory upon closer inspection. Are they shameful but ultimately innocent practices and thus harmless conversation pieces? Or do guilty pleasures refer to powerful disciplinary regimes that suppress pleasure and joy? Is the discussion of supposedly status-inconsistent guilty pleasures subversive, or does it reinforce distinctions through specific valorizations and devaluations?
Discussions of guilty pleasures playfully and critically refer to questions of legitimate taste as well as categorizations of high and mass culture. In doing so, guilty pleasures invoke canonical categorizations debated in sociology and aesthetics, bringing them into play even where they are supposedly rejected. As a systematic investigation of the phenomenon does not yet exist, the interdisciplinary project sets out to open up the surprising historical depth of guilty pleasure discourse which reaches back to the Enlightenment.
What appears to be a product of the consumer culture of the late 20th century proves to be a significantly older phenomenon. The project reconstructs a previously unknown genealogy to explore what was and is at stake during peaks of guilty pleasure discourse. Using methods from literary studies, cultural studies, social sciences, and the history of ideas, the relationships between value judgments, consumption, and affect are reconstructed from 1700 to the present. The central hypothesis is that intensified discourse about guilty pleasures is linked to cultural changes, epistemic conflicts, and shifting social hierarchies. A historical and comparative investigation thus brings forth new perspectives on our contemporary moment where, given the rise of populism and accelerated climate change, talk of guilty pleasures seems to have lost its innocence.
The results will appear continuously in a series of columns, a format that was essential for debates on guilty pleasures. Additionally, findings will be discussed in a public workshop and finally systematized in scholarly publications.
Publications:
Phillips, Roxanne (2025): Uneasy Pleasures. On Enjoyment and Discomfort, in: KWI-BLOG, 05.03.2025.
Buckermann, Paul (2024): Guilty Pleasures as Conspicuous Consumption? Cultural Omnivores, Snobbery, and the Distinguished Taste for Authentic Trash, in: KWI-BLOG, 09.12.2024.
Events and talks:
“Towards a Genealogy of Guilty Pleasures. Performing Reflexive Consumption”, presentation by Paul Buckermann and Morten Paul at the Kick-Off event „Open Up“ by VolkswagenStiftung (05.03.2026).