Finally got to this! Great stuff as usual. The bit at the end about the the novelist's ability to break through the silence of our own self-absorption to make us experience the thoughts and lives of others is definitely an appealing thought, but isn't the view of literature as a tool for cultivating empathy partly to blame for how we ended up with The Kite Runner on the English syllabus?
Thanks! The empathy thing definitely gives me pause. Two possible answers: 1. every powerful idea that becomes a cliche was once fresh, vital, and even subversive; 2. because GE's fiction is so distanced and philosophical in style, it's less about empathy as emotion and all the oversimplification and self-congratulation that comes with that and more about a rigorous comprehensive reconstruction of the other's whole lifeworld and worldview, as in this essay where Namwali Serpell contrasts Hannah Arendt's "representative thinking" with "the banality of empathy":
"Rather than virtually becoming another, she asks you to imagine using your own mind but from their position. It’s a matter of keeping your distance, maintaining integrity, in both senses."
Thanks for the link! The reference to the need for distance in such matters made me think that the now ubiquitous therapeutic language about setting boundaries (much as it annoys me) is perhaps a necessary corrective to unreflective empathy as an ideal (perhaps not unrelated to the mystic temptation of believing that we can gain unmediated access to the mind of God or the universe or whatever).
Finally got to this! Great stuff as usual. The bit at the end about the the novelist's ability to break through the silence of our own self-absorption to make us experience the thoughts and lives of others is definitely an appealing thought, but isn't the view of literature as a tool for cultivating empathy partly to blame for how we ended up with The Kite Runner on the English syllabus?
Thanks! The empathy thing definitely gives me pause. Two possible answers: 1. every powerful idea that becomes a cliche was once fresh, vital, and even subversive; 2. because GE's fiction is so distanced and philosophical in style, it's less about empathy as emotion and all the oversimplification and self-congratulation that comes with that and more about a rigorous comprehensive reconstruction of the other's whole lifeworld and worldview, as in this essay where Namwali Serpell contrasts Hannah Arendt's "representative thinking" with "the banality of empathy":
"Rather than virtually becoming another, she asks you to imagine using your own mind but from their position. It’s a matter of keeping your distance, maintaining integrity, in both senses."
https://archive.is/xIK5I
Thanks for the link! The reference to the need for distance in such matters made me think that the now ubiquitous therapeutic language about setting boundaries (much as it annoys me) is perhaps a necessary corrective to unreflective empathy as an ideal (perhaps not unrelated to the mystic temptation of believing that we can gain unmediated access to the mind of God or the universe or whatever).