(iPoster) Empathic Institutions: Building ‘Cruel’ Attachments in the Face of Crisis

• In Event: Poster Sessions: International Security II & Normative Political Theory
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Normative Political Theory

Abstract

In recent years, empathy has been lauded as one of the most redemptive features of humanity; in fact, it is often proposed as an antidote to some of the most urgent and devastating political crises, among them racism and racial violence. Since its earliest deployment in the social sciences, empathy has been held up as an ideal with the capacity to transform the polity and encourage relationships that defy oppression and subvert individual difference in favor of solidarity. The ubiquity of empathy within contemporary political discourse is echoed in theoretical attempts to negotiate democratic unity through a mediation of the lifeworld of the ‘Other.’ Contrary to this impulse, I argue that empathy, though invoked commonly in political projects as an ameliorative for conditions of crisis and conflict, is in fact deeply fraught and operates squarely within the terms of white supremacy. Specifically, I argue that empathy resides in the foundations of some of the most punitive institutions that persist within American democracy, revealing an authoritative underbelly of American democratic governance that conceals itself via cruel forms of relationality. My analysis focuses heavily on the criminal legal apparatus and the carceral state, where I locate ‘empathy’ as an institutional mandate that emerges at key points of the crimino-legal process, particularly where the seeds of antiblackness and racial violence are frequently planted. I uncover how empathy is institutionally baked into practices of policing, techniques of control and surveillance, the courts system, sentencing guidelines and practices, corrective institutions, and carceral disciplines. I posit that empathy is not something that only resides in the good-hearted individual to be deployed at will towards those who are suffering, but should be understood in its institutional manifestations as a set of practices that sanctions various forms of violence and punitiveness. This analysis thus casts doubt on depictions of empathy as a vehicle for political emancipation and transformation, and prompts a suspicion around those discourses which incentivize the use of empathy over more concrete forms of political action and institutional intervention, especially in the face of crisis.

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