Numb Networks

Abstract

In this response to “Whitman’s Sympathies” by Jane Bennett, I show how Whitman broke with Romantic poetic convention by representing sympathy as an involuntary, embodied affect—as, in Bennett’s terms, “(onto)Sympathy.” However, as I argue, the ontology of Whitmanian sympathy undermines the notion of individual identity—of autonomy, singularity, and difference—upon which sympathy’s traditionally inclusive, pluralist politics depends. Instead of persons and interpersonal ethical relations, Whitmanian sympathy conjures a networked and processual ontology in which discrete entities cannot finally be distinguished. Thus, I argue that Bennett’s notion of “(onto)Sympathy” is incommensurable with the syntax of individual identity and (race, sex, gender, class, species) difference. But even if this makes it incompatible with a politics of recognition, I argue that this networked ontology may nevertheless be strategically better adapted to address the political challenges of ecological crisis.