<underfire> compassion and com-passion

Wed Nov 15 07:35:49 EST 2006

Compassion is an emotion and a compassionate act is an act expressing  
such an emotion (putting your arms around a victim, for instance).  
Literally, compassion is sharing in the suffering of someone else. As  
an emotion, compassion can be a powerful motivation, even a deeply  
felt basic human value. Compassion inspired actions, however, are  
just that, inspired or motivated by compassion. They are not  
literally compassionate as acts in the sense that they do not form a  
well defined type of acts. One can kill out of compassion  or try to  
save someone's life in spite of his suffering, for instance.
It is in this sense that there is no logical room for compassionate  
politics. Political decisions can be motivated by compassion, but  
politics are primarily concerned with the well being of the people  
for whom the politicians are responsible. Even geopolitical  
agreements such as the so called universal human rights are based on  
the notion of equality (if I give the other this right, I can also  
claim it for myself) than on that of compassion. Upholding rights  
based on the notion of equality leads to a safer world than appealing  
to an emotion that may differ greatly from one individual to another  
or one culture to another.

Paul Mercken

Op 14-nov-2006, om 13:51 heeft bracha L. Ettinger het volgende  
geschreven:

> 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.
>> _______________________________________________
>> Under Fire  http://underfire.eyebeam.org
>> 16 October - 10 December 2006
>> International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville
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>
> _______________________________________________
> Under Fire  http://underfire.eyebeam.org
> 16 October - 10 December 2006
> International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville
> all writings copyright individual authors
> no commercial use without permission
> to post a message, send an email to:
> underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
> to unsubscribe, send an email to:
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