<underfire> compassion and com-passion

[bracha L. Ettinger]

Allan and others,

I will try to draw the field in which compassion can work. It is  
surely not the political field of forces. I agree with you that we  
can't talk on compassion within the context of a nation or a state. I  
too believe that "the entrance of the term compassion into the  
mainstream discourse is a neutralizing shibboleth".  However, even  
though every concept can be used by the stronger for political and  
ideological manipulations, compassion itself is not inherently  
political and ideological. It is for that reason that to pretend  
compassion in the name of a nation or a state or even in the name of  
a community has no meaning, it is therefore a manipulative step.  
However, Compassion is a term that politicians can (and do) abuse in  
the same way that they can abuse whatever serves their purpose. I  
can't stop any politician from using this term, but this is not going  
to stop me from practicing and articulating compassion.

Compassion is intrapsychic, subjective and transsubjective. It works  
its way, like art does, by fine attunements that evade the political  
systems. When I say that the originry event of peace is compassion I  
address a kind of fragilizing subjective openness which is also a  
resistance, that the political level can't handle or reach by  
definition, though there is hope that it will take it into  
consideration at the long run, and always indirectly.

I am suggesting to articulate the originary com-passion, co-response- 
ability and wit(h)nessing in and by which pre-subjective primary  
compassion is manifested, and I start with the becoming-subject, the  
pre-subject and the partial-subject as we can understand them within  
the context of psychoanalysis--as coemerging with the mother, or even  
the archaic m/Other or m/Othernal figure. The pre-subject's  
compassion and fascinance informs its own emergence with-in a co- 
birthing (co-naissance) of trans-subjective entities—composed of I(s)  
and non-I(s)—by way of affective and trans-sensed knowledge. I am  
talking on compassion as growing within a transsubjective sphere  
revealed in inter-subjective relationships. It concerns webs of few  
each time, what I named “severality” to differentiate it from  
“multiplicity”. It evades “community”, “nations” and “states”. Trans- 
subjective co-response-ability, inaugurated by and in the primordial  
matrixial encounter-event—where pre-maternal hospitality, empathy and  
responsibility encounters prenatal pre-mature response-ability,  
compassion and fascinance—and inaugurated at the same time also by  
and in interconnectedness in self-relinquishment and wit(h)nessing,  
is a primary psycho-aesthetical and psycho-ethical basis upon which  
creativity and ethical potentiality can evolve all throughout life  
with-in new matrixial clusters (and not “nations” which are not  
matrixial custers or webs by definition). The matrixial is a  
signifier of feminine ethics and feminine aesthetics. My feel- 
knowing, that prematernal/presubjective experience of encounter- 
event, is being burnt upon, diluted inside, and is establishing a  
dimension of subjectivity-as-encounter, had been transmuted from an  
intimate enigma onto a metapsychological perspective through the  
ethical working-through of therapy and the aesthetical working- 
through of painting. The artistic core is a burnt. The experiencing  
of the artistic core etches the languishing subjectivity.Shareability  
in a space of the several entails what I named besidedness. In the  
matrixial sphere, besidedness, like fading-in-transformation, is a  
metramorphic unconscious mechanism. Besidedness is experienced and  
registered before substitution and split appear and also beside them.  
If depressive integration is a dissolving of a split, the joy and  
sorrow of besidedness is folded within differentiating-in-coemergence  
and co-fading, before and alongside split and substitution, before  
and alongside integration. In working-through our besidedness and  
recognizing it, we are becoming more vulnerable yet we are re-paving  
a path to the primary compassion. Re-co-birth can occur in  
hospitality and generosity triggered within com-passion.

I hope that at least to have made clear what is the human sphere I  
intend by the eventing of compassion and the encounter-event of com- 
passion. In the same way that we don't reject "love" simply because  
politicians talk in the name of love, and we don't stop loving our  
children because politicians talk in the name of "loving the  
children" , a clear difference will be made, at least in this  
discussion group, between  the idea of compassion and the  
neutralizing  politically abusive use of the term "compassion".

Bracha

-----------------------------------------------------

Bracha L. Ettinger, Ph.D

Marcel Duchamp Professor of Psychoanalysis and Art, Media &  
Communications Division, EGS, Saas-Fee.

Research Professor of Psychoanalysis and Aesthetics of Art, AHRB  
Centre CATH, University of Leeds.

Member of Tel Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis (TAICP).




On Nov 13, 2006, at 11:03 PM, Allan Siegel wrote:

> Since its first appearance in this discussion, the conflating of  
> peace and compassion has been problematic. I agree with Michael  
> when he says that, “Peace and compassion are two entirely different  
> things. They can come together, but often they don't.” Earlier Iain  
> stated that, “in a world of savage injustice, peace is only  
> armistice.” This seems to get closer to the crux of the issue. To  
> talk of peace and compassion within the context of a nation, a  
> state or even a community – an entity with an articulated and  
> shared set of values – is one thing. But to raise this in the  
> context of situations in which the power relations are unequal is  
> quite something else. Neither peace nor compassion are neutral  
> terms; both are inherently political and ideological. Does peace  
> come about because the more powerful force has achieved its goals  
> and then feels ‘compassionate’ in ceasing the violence it has  
> initiated against those less powerful? Does peace come about  
> because NATO feels obliged to address an injustice? How different  
> is the moralistic compassion of neo-colonialism from the  
> paternalist compassion of colonialism?
>
> It seems that invoking compassion for the other is very often a  
> means of perpetuating an injustice. Its affect maintains an  
> imbalance of power in favour of those who are able to exercise  
> compassion and against those upon whom it is bestowed. In present  
> situations – most notably in the Middle East – the entrance of the  
> term compassion into the mainstream discourse is a neutralizing  
> shibboleth that distracts us from the more comprehensible (and  
> reprehensible) political objectives of the more powerful and  
> screens us from the glaring injustices enacted upon lands and  
> peoples that seem to be in a continuous state of pacification. Part  
> of the project of conquest is the dehumanization and  
> dehistoricizing of those to be contained. What role does compassion  
> play in this project?
>
> I concur with Alain (if I understood the nuances correctly) that  
> reality is now akin to the paradigm wherein, “The concept of war on  
> terror through "critical infrastructure  protection" mentioned by  
> Julian Reid is precisely the type of system creating conformity  
> between neoliberal economy, vanishing politics and half private  
> repressive hierarchical new systems.” There are pockets of these  
> types of systems everywhere throughout the Western world. Some are  
> more refined than others. In this context, ‘compassion’ and slogans  
> like the ‘peace process’ or ‘the road map for peace’ or ‘building  
> democracy’ only provide ideological cover for the most blatant,  
> crude and violent military incursions whose scenarios lie somewhere  
> between The Godfather 2 and Dr. Strangelove.
>
> A.S.
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> 16 October - 10 December 2006
> International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville
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