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Lacan’s ideas on repression in the context of hearing one’s own message from the other acts as the springboard for this reading of Shame (McQueen, 2011). Brandon and Sissy are in thrall to the same repressed signifier. For each of them the manner in which this repressed signifier is enacted by the other is unbearable while each seems relatively able to tolerate how it is lived subjectively. Sissy’s visit pushes them to an unsustainable confrontation with this signifier unleashing the death drive in both of them.