Rethinking empathy

A deceptively simple question animates Imperfect Solidarities (Floating Opera Press, 2024), a short new book by writer and art critic Aruna D’Souza: ‘What would it mean if our politics were based not on our ability to empathize with people whose experiences are distant from our own, but on our willingness to care for others just by virtue of their being beings?’

By addressing this question, D’Souza, a regular contributor to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications, explores the intricate intersections of race, gender, and identity with remarkable depth and nuance. After rejecting the idea that political solidarity ought to be based on our inward feeling of sympathy for others, she suggests we recognize a much more demanding duty, a universal obligation to care for others.

She argues that empathy, while it may provoke a reaction, too often remains a personal response that fails to translate into political commitment or concrete actions. She calls this the ‘trap of empathy’ – a dynamic that subtly shifts the burden of responsibility from society to the victims themselves. In the West, D’Souza argues, spectators of atrocities expect victims to perform their trauma to raise awareness, basically forcing them to make a spectacle of their pain so that others might understand or even feel. Instead of receiving the immediate solidarity they need, they must beg for sympathy.

The author challenges the readers to reconsider their roles as a spectator of injustice and urges them to embrace a form of selfless solidarity that is respectful of the pain of the victims.

The book starts with media coverage of the horrors produced by the ongoing Israeli assault in Gaza. In following chapters, she analyses Amitav Ghosh’s novel Sea of ​​Poppies (2008), which tracks the lives, language, and perils of misunderstanding of a motley crew of princes, pirates, peasants, and sailors, each with his or her own patois, or idiosyncratic form of speaking, crammed together on an American schooner in the era leading up to the Opium Wars between China and the United Kingdom. The novel implies that solidarity is a transcendental principle that applies to every human being, even in situations where they barely understand each other.

Another chapter highlights Candice Breitz’s 2016 installation Love Story, which was built on video interviews with six refugees seeking asylum from dangerous situations in Syria, Angola, Congo, India, Venezuela, and Somalia. A first room of the installation displays the famous actors Alec Baldwin and Julianne Moore recounting some of what these refugees had to say; the second room shows footage of the six asylum seekers telling their stories in their own words. The stark contrast invites us to reflect on what Teju Cole has called the ‘white saviour industrial complex’.

This phenomenon highlights how, even when driven by a moral mission, white individuals can unknowingly benefit from the very structures of oppression they claim to resist. This subjective, often superficial empathy fails to capture the true complexity of human experiences. ‘Hollywood can never fully represent that complexity’, D’Souza argues—the same Hollywood where the manipulation of empathy frequently translates into box office success. While D’Souza’s critique is sharp, it is crucial to demand a greater sense of moral responsibility from the film industry, which, given its global influence, has a profound influence on global audiences, and especially impacts attitudes towards those who are frequently misrepresented.

D’Souza’s analysis invites us to question how empathy and the desire for solidarity, while often serving as a unifying force, can sometimes be limited to building superficial coalitions—the so-called ‘big tent mentality’. This approach promotes the idea of ​​a broad coalition while maintaining the very power dynamics it superficially claims to challenge.

Candice Breitz’s ‘Legends’, part of PS1 installation at CAC, New Orleans. Image by Stacie Brew via Flickr

In a final chapter, D’Souza explores the ​​‘productive value of difference, the power of speaking from a position of isolation’, through the reference to the exhibition Dialectics of Isolation (1980), curated by Ana Mendieta, Kazuko Miyamoto, and Zarina Hashmi. Subtitled ‘An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States’, the show featured women of colour challenging art-world norms by isolating themselves from the mainstream structures that would appropriate and neutralize their stories.

This is the kind of resistance that the author aims for in her own narrative, a narrative that does not pretend to be univocal; instead, she promotes a tension with a dominant system that stifles the complexity of personal experiences in favour of a general and bland empathy.

Engaging with Édouard Glissant’s concept of the ‘right to opacity’, Arouna D’Souza’s solidarity is reframed to respect individuals’ rights to maintain their complexity and mystery. This right is not merely theoretical but essential for building authentic alliances in a world marked by inequality and conflict.

While D’Souza’s proposal to place care at the centre of solidarity is provocative and offers thought-provoking insights, it must be counterbalanced by emotional awareness. A politics of care that ignores the importance of empathy risks becoming sterile, unable to foster authentic connections. D’Souza prompts us to consider the notion of ‘care before empathy’, in which our sense of duty is based on a commitment to care for people as human beings.

The real challenge lies in integrating care with empathy, creating a form of solidarity that not only respects differences but also deeply connects with the experiences of others. Only by striking this balance can we aspire to build a truly equitable future.

This article was first published by Public Seminar on 4 March 2025.