Against Empathy: Levinas and Ethical Criticism in the 21st Century

What is it about?

In this article, we adhere to the reasoning by Marshall W. Gregory and subsequent contributors to the debate initiated by the Journal of Literary Theory concerning the long-term relations between literature and ethics. We turn attention to an issue that has thus far been largely ignored in this debate: the role of postmodern criticism in shaping the new face of ethical criticism. In particular, we challenge the concept of empathy and the assumption that empathy is a fundamental element of ethical reading. Looking at what we believe to be the most influential and interesting stream in postmodern ethical thinking—Emmanuel Levinas’s conceptualization of the infinite responsibility towards the inaccessible other—we identify the major problems of the concept of empathy and empathetic reading. We then present an alternative way of thinking about ethical criticism as involving an attentive response to the representation of suffering while deconstructing the empathetic position of the reader. We illustrate these arguments through a reading of Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace (1996).

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