33: The Problem with Empathy feat. Jade E. Davis

Abby and Patrick welcome Jade E. Davis, author of the new book The Other Side of Empathy. They discuss Jade’s critique of naïve notions of “empathy” and what she calls “empathy culture.” They examine the ways empathy can flatten suffering, demand particular performances of suffering, and serve fantasies that there’s one “right way” to suffer and that the Other can always be assimilated into the self. Other topics include Davis’ genealogy of the term “empathy” and how its history is more recent than many might think; the fundamentally colonial aspects of the empathetic gaze; human zoos and some of their contemporary equivalents; and the influences of Edith Stein and Frantz Fanon on her work. They also explore the implications of her thinking on how scholars ought to work with images and the possible real-world effects of such activities and why we can – and in fact must – judge history by our contemporary standards, since history’s standards are never simply past.

Jade E. Davis’ The Other Side of Empathy (2023).

Jade E. Davis' website and links to her other writing are here.

Jade E. Davis’s zine, Empathy as an Ideology can be found (and printed!) here.

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