September saw the publication of a book exploring the power dynamics underlying the contemporary affective injunction to ‘be empathetic’, and their complex social and geopolitical implications.<\/p>\n
The author, Dr Carolyn Pedwell<\/a>, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies, analyses a range of popular and scholarly sites and texts and investigates the possibilities, risks and contradictions of figuring empathy as an effective tool for engendering transnational social justice.<\/p>\n Dr Pedwell says \u201cThe\u00a0cultivation of more (and\u00a0better) empathy\u00a0has been posed as an affective solution to a wide range of complex social problems worldwide.\u00a0Indeed, of all the emotions, empathy is the one most frequently called for as an affective bridge between social and\u00a0cultural\u00a0differences and an emotional means of\u00a0achieving social\u00a0transformation on an\u00a0international\u00a0scale.\u00a0 In this book, I wanted to explore the relationships between empathy and transnational politics more critically, asking whether empathetic engagement can distance as much as it connects, exclude as much as it humanizes, fix as much as it transforms and oppress as much as it frees.\u00a0 Nonetheless, Affective Relations<\/em> doesn\u2019t simply dismiss or give up on the promise of empathy.\u00a0 Rather, it asks how we might translate empathy differently – how liberal, neoliberal and neocolonial articulations of empathy might be re-interpreted and realigned to activate alternative affective connections, solidarities and potentialities transnationally.\u201d<\/p>\n More information can be found on Google eBook<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" September saw the publication of a book exploring the power dynamics underlying the contemporary affective injunction to ‘be empathetic’, and their complex social and geopolitical … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7098,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[124],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7098"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2149"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2154,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149\/revisions\/2154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sspssr-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}