The Aesth- ethics of Empathy: Bakhtin and the Return to Self as Ethical Act

Abstract

In the above extract from JM Coetzee’s novel Elisabeth Costello, the title character of the book expresses the popular view by which empathy — in Costello’s words, the capacity to imagine oneself as someone else, to think oneself into the place of the victims — is perceived as a virtue: a moral or ethical good intimately related, if not essential, to altruism.2 In most ‘pre-theoretical’ understandings of the term, then, empathy is understood either as a motivator for pro-social action, or simply as part of what allows us to feel genuine care and concern for others, whether we act upon that concern or not. Conversely, a lack of empathy is perceived as a moral deficit that makes it possible for human beings to mistreat, abuse, or remain indifferent to the suffering of others. This ethical reading of empathy has not only been central to philosophical reflections about how or why such terrible crimes as the Holocaust — to invoke Costello’s historical reference — could occur; it has also played a role in the conceptualisation of cultural memory practices dealing with limit events. In line with the rhetoric of emotional or empathic persuasion more commonly seen in humanitarian campaigns, memorials and museums that address traumatic pasts are increasingly designed and constructed in such a way as to maximise the possibility of identification and empathic response in their interlocutors, for example through the use of personal stories or props to facilitate identification with victims.