<underfire> compassion and com-passion

Fri Nov 17 03:03:59 EST 2006

There are a lot of interesting questions that arise from this debate. I
don't know if I have the answers to them but ...

What if "logically", logical reason arises from emotion? Or, better, logic
arises only in the context of relations and affects ("well being" for
example)? There are enough political theorists (from Nietzsche to Edwards
Bernays to William E. Connolly, and from all sides of the political fence),
let alone neuroscientists, arguing that this might be the case . For all
these perhaps, reason and logic are vastly overdetermined in human life,
while the central importance of affect and emotion is only just to beginning
to be understood - as are the central roles they play in human life, even in
human thinking, in culture, and crucially, in politics. If these thinkers
are right, then compassion might be seen to play a very important role as a
foundation for a different logic. Of course, it wouldn't have to be
compassion. It could be self-interest (which seems to me a clear logic that
arises from very basic affective relations, this of course at the very heart
of much political theory).

Then there's the problem of the separation of emotion from actions below ...
It seems to me that the lines between action, affect, emotion and logic are
never completely clear. Moreover, of all of these, logic seems to me to play
the smallest role in political events, beyond the mask it provides for
actions/affects/ relations of all kinds (few of them compassionate of
course). Or to put this another way, where would one find an example of a
"purely logical" political act? Or for that matter an emotion that does not
arise in the context of action. Or, more interestingly perhaps, an action
which is not motivated and indeed propelled beginning to end by emotion of
some kind (even basic "interest")?

Of course, in reply to the criticism of emotion below, one can say that one
can kill out of logic .. perhaps, or try to save someone's life in spite of
suffering ...  "logically".

And I wonder about some of the other terms here. Perhaps the notion of
"equality" or "well being", in cultural practice, and beyond the general
abstraction, varies at least as much as the specificity of different forms
of compassion ...

For me, this is why there is so much to Bracha's points about compassion. At
the least, I think the specificity of compassion in a political setting -
whether it is the solution to everything or not - needs to be thought about
practically, guided by the kind of complexity in Bracha's thought.

best, Andrew

On 15/11/06, Paul Mercken <pmercken at wanadoo.nl> wrote:
>
> 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.
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> 16 October - 10 December 2006
> International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville
> all writings copyright individual authors
> no commercial use without permission
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-- 
"I thought I had reached port; but I seemed to be cast
back again into the open sea" (Deleuze and Guattari, after Leibniz)

Dr Andrew Murphie - Senior Lecturer
School of Media, Film and Theatre, University of New South Wales, Sydney,
Australia, 2052
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