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The problem of empathy: reading the Wilkomirski Affair in the light of the history of literature
Ist Teil von
Discursive Framings of Human Rights, 2017, p.220-235
Ort / Verlag
Routledge
Erscheinungsjahr
2017
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Alma/SFX Local Collection
Beschreibungen/Notizen
There seems to be a common belief today, among book circle readers, scholars,
and presidents alike, that human rights and literature are interrelated
phenomena. From different points of view, based on more or less qualified
analyses and assumptions, it is widely held that the two areas are based on two
mutual cornerstones: the individual experiential human being, and the
psychological capacity of empathy – of being able to imagine how it is to be
another (cf. Goldberg and Moore; Hunt; Keen; Nussbaum). Just think about
classic modern novels, such as Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740), or Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), which foreground the personal
experiences and feelings of ‘inferior’ characters, such as the female servant or
the Negro slave, or any Amnesty International campaign that criticizes human
rights abuses globally by telling the stories of individuals – of the 600 days of
imprisonment of an Egyptian photojournalist, or of the death sentence of the
Sudanese woman whose crime was to marry a Christian.2 The novels, as well
as the campaigns, invite their readers to emotionally engage with the personal
stories that are being told, as Martha Nussbaum puts it, to ‘recognize the otheras a center of experience’ (Political Emotions 146). Despite the different political,
legal, and cultural institutions, discourses, and agencies that structure and validate
them, novels and a universalist ethics of human rights thus welcome a similar
reaction from its receivers – an empathic response.