<underfire> compassion and com-passion

Fri Nov 17 05:21:02 EST 2006

Dear all,

Why is it that i am automatically tuned off by anybody feeling compassion 
towards someone or something? Is it because the evocation of compassion 
means to identify with someone or something, particularly someone's 
condition?  Is it because with compassion comes patronization?  Is it 
because compassion functions through a relationship of power? One has it and 
another doesn’t. One holds it as a gift and is privileged enough by the mere 
capability of offering it as a gift to another who is believed to need it?

Or is it because whenever compassion is evoked so is guilt? Especially white 
guilt?

Or is it because of the conditions that evoke compassion that I’m really 
turned off by it? Who else does one feel compassion for if not the poor, the 
hungry, the devastated the miserable, the depressed, the black bodies of the 
south?  Should one feel compassion for the rich, the happy or the healthy? 
Do such conditions evoke compassion, in the first place?

I suppose compassion is definitely a very subjective feeling, depending on 
how big your heart is, one can feel compassion for the murderer, or not.

So what if I don’t have heart?

But doesn’t compassion always also translate into objectivity, especially in 
its rendering? For if you are to feel compassion you must look beside 
yourself, to identify with another’s condition?

So, am I so turned off by the compassionate because he/she always assumes 
another’s condition, and universalizes them through their own feelings and 
their affects, without having any means of understanding the particular?

Am I turned off by compassion because it almost always creates a power 
relationship?  Is it because compassion is so self-referential, particularly 
in the West, which is always beside itself and can’t help but always 
identify with every story, every skin, to make it its own?  Is it because 
compassion is such a burden, a burden the Western parent always assumes it 
carries-- needing to  mother everything?

How can we really 'feel' for those (m)others who's sons were sodomized right 
under their eyes?  Is feeling compassion for the Iraqis, the Palestinians, 
the Kashmiris, the Sudanese, the Afghanis, the residents of New Orleans, the 
homeless, enough?  Can we (those living here in the West leading very 
privileged lives) really identify with those whose homes are constantly 
under attack?   Must we identify?  Or can we do something else out of our 
privilege, outside of our whiteness?

But why do I reject compassion?

Is it because it translates into white guilt? Is it because it has always 
historically come in the hearts of the colonial and today’s neo-colonial 
regimes of power—called Democracy. Because compassion has so peacefully 
co-existed with the gun, functioning as a tool for control, usurpation/rape?

Compassion evokes for me the photos UNICEF, or Save the Children or any of 
the hundreds of missionaries and US/UN outposts compose of hungry children 
from war torn--those far off dark places. The message is almost always of 
compassion.  By extracting feelings of compassion and pity through the eyes 
of the photographed misery, these missionaries seek to function off of guilt 
and compassion the change they want to see in the world. Because the 
formula, of compassion and guilt, creates the capability of giving. 
Compassion begs guilt and the guilty give pennies, or send out their armies. 
By giving money one feels less burdened, less fragile and frazzled in the 
face of the photograph(ed)—the poverty.  It’s such an individualizing 
feeling! for it offers redemption (from one’s privilege, for one, which is 
almost always assumed to be natural or god ordained—“those poor souls they 
were born on the wrong side of the earth! Thank god I was spared, I must 
have compassion!”)

Where are primordial feelings hidden in my body?  Where do I dig? How deep 
should I dig in order to find them?  Must I dig only within myself? What if 
i don't have a uterus? If i've had a hysterectomy?  I suppose primordial is 
so primordial, and deep, that I cannot but function outside of (material) 
history? (the one I have lived in for the past 30 years, that's at least 
what i told my therapist).

I know nothing else.  I cannot really identify with anything else.  Why must 
it always come down to the nitty gritty mud? My uterus? Why must I seek to 
create a inter-subjectivity, a com-passion, a coming together, with (a 
victim or survivor of) rape, sodomy, homelessness in order to take act 
against it?  Isn’t that a pretty violating, violent process, to my own body, 
my own psyche?

Why must compassion be the originary event of peace…. does justice have any 
possibilities?

Why does compassion becomes so important a topic on this two month long 
discussion on war and violence?  Is it because its much more comfortable to 
theorize subjective feelings, instead of collective action or histories 
realities?

How can we begin to articulate active resistance to the war and violence 
being perpetrated by the state(s) we live in and the nation(s) we’re a part 
of?  If we have to dig only deep inside in order to become fragile and not 
talk about compassion and its role and emergence in colonial histories and 
its eurocentric offerings than where are the possibilities of material 
change?  Isn’t it time that a dialogue ensues (in this country) or to be 
realistic on this list serve, at the least, that creates possibilities for 
change that is historical, that proposes a concrete theory, perhaps, which 
can be practiced, to dismantle today’s military industrial complex?  How can 
such a theory begin outside of guilt, and redemption, outside of whiteness?

Is it really possible to create a dialogue towards change that’s beyond 
histories, languages, skins and violences we inherit and function in?

What would it mean if we began to question the privilege, instead of evading 
the ways we function in dominate histories, languages, skin and violence?

Are we so, in this day and age, so fragmented we have no collective power, 
imagination?

Must we always just “re-think” the world?  How about changing it? We know 
Marxism has been re-thought, and Reason done away with, by brilliant 
thinkers, but not the bomb?  What do we do with that, besides having 
compassion, and evading politics and our bodies?
What do we do with the bombs?

peace,
sarah

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Southworth, Kate" <Kate.Southworth at falmouth.ac.uk>
To: <underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2006 5:32 PM
Subject: Re: <underfire> compassion and com-passion

Dear Bracha, Allan and others,
Thank you so much for your texts, and please forgive me for not responding 
earlier, but I have just returned from a trip on which I wasn’t checking 
email.

Bracha, I am very much interested in your articulation of compassion as 
something that ‘works its way like art does, by fine attunements that evade 
the political systems’.  The possibilities and potentials that you open up 
by being able to theorise ‘a kind of fragilizing subjective openness which 
is also a resistance, that the political level can't handle or reach by 
definition’ seems to me to be so immensely significant for a number of 
reasons.  Firstly, It seems that in proposing an intra-psychic sphere that 
draws on pre-natal relations, you are giving voice and making visible 
aspects of life that are often denied or interpreted through inadequate 
frames.  In bringing these aspects of the real into language, you are 
opening up a space of possibility, of potential, in which we can begin to 
rethink the world.   Secondly, it seems to me (but of course I may be 
mistaken) that the Matrixial sphere is that aspect of being human that 
evades not just the political system, but (perhaps by definition?) is also 
that aspect of being human which evades any system of control.

Kindest regards,
Kate

-----Original Message-----
From: underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org on behalf of bracha L. 
Ettinger
Sent: Tue 11/14/2006 12:51 PM
To: underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
Cc:
Subject: Re: <underfire> compassion and com-passion

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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> _______________________________________________
> 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:
> underfire-leave at underfire.eyebeam.org 