<underfire> compassion and com-passion

[bracha L. Ettinger]

Sarah,
You don't need to have a penis in order to think according to a  
phallic logic.
Analogically,
you don't need to have a uterus in order to apprehend the matrixial  
borderlinking. (Why such an aversion vis-a-vis images invoking the  
female body?) Try to imagine the uterus as a thinking apparatus as  
well as image and symbol (with a residual from a real) for  
articulating my concepts of coemergence, cofading, trans-subjective  
transmisson and transformational potentiality.

Now,
to understand compassion in the matrixial sphere one would need to  
give up some phallic parameters for thinking it, including the ideas  
of guilt, religion doctrines, political declarations, patronizing  
pity, and the rest. Matrixial coemergence subverts the subject-as- 
individual confined to his/her own body. Therefore "inside" and  
"outside" are necessarily rethought of (one can't disappear inside  
one's self if there is no I without a non-I) as well as sexual  
difference--but not in terms of gender identity!

Invisible dear Jordan,
I hesitate if to take the question any further in the present list- 
discussion context.
Some  seem to suggest that everything must enter the power machines,  
the economy machines, the phallic machines of dichotomies (me/others,  
white/colored), etcetera.
Some seem to indicate, as Sarah clearly does, that there is a shorter  
way to stop the bomb, and that the discussion on compassion  
interferes with finding the solution (—does this thread stops her  
from developing another thread, by the way?)
A big confusion arises when the idea of compassion is confused with  
the way political leaders or religious doctrines are using this word  
(or understand it or interprate it) in order to promote some cruel  
business and the use of force, now and in the past.

I shall however say a little more, for those who wish to continue  
this thread beside other threads, and see if we can advance to  
understand why in my view compassion is a founding encounter-event of  
peace.
However, the way to unfold this can't be short, and, first, I would  
like to thank you Andrew, John Phillips, Allan, Kate, and others.
Compassion—as a state of mind and a point of view, as well as ethical  
working-through and aesthetical working-through—works against split  
and projection. I am working to articulate it from the level of the  
Thing, of which I am rethinking in terms of an Encounter-Event,  
through the notion of borderlinking (rather than lack or objet a)  
"up" to the level of desire. Co-creative transformational  
potentiality gives rise to a particular kind of knowledge produced in/ 
by what I conceive of as unconscious strings and phantasmatic threads  
vibrating and creating a psychic-mental resonance space, as well as  
vibrating and creating within a resonance space, where the ethical  
capacity grows within the primary aesthetical awakening—primary both  
in terms of the past: the original encounter-eventing with-in the  
real becoming-mother, and in terms of the now: the potentiality for  
reattunement awakened in new prolonged encounter-events. Thus, the  
matrixial co-response-ability combined with com-passion is an  
originary "ethical affect" on the borders of the aesthetical/ 
affective-sensitivity. Primary compassion is a way of mental and  
emotional passage to the Other that leans on the passage to the wit(h) 
nessing m/Other. The road from compassion to responsibility is paved  
by this kind of passage and by the potentiality of wit(h)nessing as  
it developpes and spreads from one matrixial web to other matrixial  
webs. Promary compassion participates in the differentiating, in  
reattunement and by resonance, of the I (as presubject and partial- 
subject) from a non-I (as partial-subject)—differentiation that is  
worked-through not from "the same", and not from an "opposite", but  
from an Other (and first of all the m/Other) who is unknowingly  
already transconnected inter-with the I. This non-symbiotic  
transitivity enables the I to keep a sense of itself with-in basic  
non-sameness in jointness during differentiating. Self and m/Other  
differentiate while getting a subjective sense from non-sameness by  
continual reattunement: trans-subjectivity is not a fusion. Where the  
non-I doesn't respect the I's difference s/he forces domination and  
initiates violence.

	Primary compassion doesn't stem from empathy and doesn't necessarily  
entail empathy.  It doesn't steam from guilt and doesn't entail  
guilt. It is not to be confused with pity. It doesn't seek  
redemption. And it is not conditioned upon them all. There are  
endless refinements and tones  that differentiate degrees of  
"matureness" within  "adult" compassion, and those must be  
differentiated from presubjective primary compassion and originary  
com-passion.  Though mature compassion can very slowly develop out of  
empathy,  and even out of guilt or shame (more rare though, because  
guilt and shame might breed a more defensive-aggressive solution),  
the presubjective I is compassionate with no reasons and beyond  
reason, in resonance with the virtual cosmic string of compassion  
("cosmic" and "virtual" in the Deleuze-Guattarian sense) . In the I's  
compassionate position toward a non-I on the sub-subjective level  
there is no desire for self-sacrifice, no masochistic submission, not  
neccesarily understanding of the non-I, surely no justification for  
the non-I, not even forgiveness or thankfulness and no blame or  
guilt,  and surely not a desire for thanks, since the primary  
compassion is before and beyond them all.  I put it at the level of a  
psychic cause--objet a of a matrixial kind. The I works with-in  
metramorphosis with compassionate strings that reach her from  
different webs, and opens her co-response-ability in the matrixial  
zone where non-life is accessed by life and life is accessed by non- 
life. (Redeaing my Matrixial Trans-subjectivity or The Matrixial  
Borderspace might help those of you who would like to become more  
familiar with the meaning of each of the words I have emphasized in  
italics).

Bracha
Bracha
-----------------------------------------------------
Professor Bracha L. Ettinger, Ph.D
Artist. Psychoanalyst. Clinical Psychologist.
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).
http://www.metramorphosis.org.uk/
http://tcs.ntu.ac.uk/tcs/abstracts/21(1).html
http://www.amazon.com/Matrixial-Borderspace-Theory-Out-Bounds/dp/ 
0816635870






On Nov 17, 2006, at 12:21 PM, Sarah Husain wrote:

> 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.
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ----------
>
>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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

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