Conversations on Empathy : : Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Imagination and Radical Othering.

• Author: Mezzenzana, Francesca.
• TeilnehmendeR: Peluso, Daniela.
• Place / Publishing House: Milton : : Taylor & Francis Group,, 2023.; ©2023.
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 electronic resource (316 p.)

In the aftermath of a global pandemic, amidst new and ongoing wars, genocide, inequality, and staggering ecological collapse, some in the public and political arena have argued that we are in desperate need of greater empathy — be this with our neighbours, refugees, war victims, the vulnerable or disappearing animal and plant species. This interdisciplinary volume asks the crucial questions: How does a better understanding of empathy contribute, if at all, to our understanding of others? How is it implicated in the ways we perceive, understand and constitute others as subjects? Conversations on Empathy examines how empathy might be enacted and experienced either as a way to highlight forms of otherness or, instead, to overcome what might otherwise appear to be irreducible differences. It explores the ways in which empathy enables us to understand, imagine and create sameness and otherness in our everyday intersubjective encounters focusing on a varied range of "radical others" – others who are perceived as being dramatically different from oneself. With a focus on the importance of empathy to understand difference, the book contends that the role of empathy is critical, now more than ever, for thinking about local and global challenges of interconnectedness, care and justice.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Empathy ReduxMurray SmithIntroductionFrancesca Mezzenzana and Daniela Peluso Part I: Framing empathy and otherness: interdisciplinary perspectives1 On Empathy and its Limits: A ManifestoJason Throop2 Being Open and Looking On: Fluctuations in everyday life and PsychologyVasudevi Reddy3 A Psychological exploration of empathyHeather Ferguson and Lena Wimmer 4 Autism and the 'double empathy problem'Damian Milton, Krysia Emily Waldock, and Nathan KeatesPart II: Imagining others: human interactions5 Dynamics and Vicissitudes of EmpathyDouglas Hollan 6 Should we be against empathy? Engagement with antiheroes in fiction and the theoretical implications for empathy's role in moralityMargrethe Bruun Vaage7 Cultivating an Empathic Impulse in Wartime UkraineCatherine Wanner and Valentyna Pavlenko8 Capital Empathy, and the Inequality of the Radical OtherRobin Truth Goodman9 Situating Empathy: Holocaust Education for the Middle East/Muslim Minority in Germany Esra OEzyurekPart III: Imagining others: encounters beyond-the-human10 Just like humans: similarity, difference and empathy towards nonhumans in the Amazonian rainforest. Francesca Mezzenzana 11 Un-Tabooing Empathy: The Benefits of Empathic Science with Nonhuman Research ParticipantsChristine E. Webb, Becca Franks, Monica Gagliano and Barbara Smuts12 Augenblick and the 'rush' of extraordinary encounters: empathy and sociality with non-human radical others in AmazoniaDaniela Peluso13 Robots as radical others: Implications of children's social, emotional, and relational interactions with robots for human-robot empathyJacqueline M. Kory WestlundAfterword: Empathy's Entanglements Carolyn Pedwell.