Negative Empathy in Literature and the Arts

List of Figures

Why Negative Empathy?

1. History and Theory of an Idea

1.1 Resonance and Distance

1.2 Empathetic Suffering

1.3 Identification, Catharsis, Stimmung

2. Seductions of Rhetoric

2.1 Inner Torment, Psychological Complexity, Eloquence

2.2 Brothers in the Night: Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones

3. In the Rhythm of the Scene

3.1 Tragic Lacerations

3.1.1 Empathy and Estrangement

3.1.2 Medea’s Theatricality

3.1.3 Repeating the Abnormal Act: Robert Wilson’s Deafman Glance

3.2 The Force of the Voice

3.2.1 The Dramaturgy of the Antagonist in Melodrama

3.2.2 A Broken and Expressionist Song: Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth

3.3 Beyond Representation

3.3.1 Shadowy Actions

3.3.2 The Ecstasy of Ritual Dismemberment: Hermann Nitsch’s Theater of Orgies and Mysteries

4. Nostalgia and Anguish for Life

4.1 The Power of Images, the Power of Empathy

4.2 Stimmungseinfühlung

4.3 Abstraction against Empathy

4.4 Embodied Vision: Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St. Matthew

5. The Multiplied Gaze

5.1 On Medusa’s Side

5.1.1 The Frozen Moment

5.1.2 Power Games

5.1.3 Aestheticizing the Extreme: Robert Mapplethorpe’s “X” Portfolio

5.2 Labyrinths of Perception

5.2.1 Immersive Environments

5.2.2 Among the Ruins of History: Anselm Kiefer’s Seven Heavenly Palaces

6. Audiovisual Simulations

6.1 In the Darkness of Their Eyes

6.1.1 Identifying with Bad People

6.1.2 Empathizing with a Community: Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon

6.2 Serial Pleasures

6.2.1 TV Antiheroes

6.2.2 Challenging Empathy: Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad

Bibliography

Index

Biography

Stefano Ercolino teaches literary theory and comparative literature at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He is the author of The Maximalist Novel: From Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” to Roberto Bolaño’s “2666” and The Novel-Essay, 1884–1947. He co-edited Experimental Criticism: Franco Moretti and Literature.

Massimo Fusillo teaches comparative literature at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. He is the author of several books, including The Fetish: Literature, Cinema, Visual Art. He co-edited The Gesamtkunstwerk as Synergy of the Arts and Thinking Narratively: Between Novel-Essay and Narrative Essay.

This timely contribution to narrative aesthetics revives and critically builds out from an underutilized aesthetic concept with theoretical nuance and creativity.

-Sianne Ngai, George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor of English, University of Chicago, USA

 

Ercolino and Fusillo take Lipps’ notion of negative empathy and do some serious reconceptualizing aimed at making it a key item in the aesthetician’s toolbox. The result is an illuminating, often disturbing bringing together of works in many media: from Medea to Macbeth (opera), from Caravaggio to Kiefer.

-Greg Currie, Emeritus Professor, University of York, UK

 

Ercolino and Fusillo cast a great deal of light on the imaginative empathy that, despite our moral distance, we extend to objectionable characters in literature and the arts. Original, analytically acute, and culturally rich.

-Garry L. Hagberg, author of Living in Words: Literature, Autobiographical Language, and the Composition of Selfhood

 

Stefano Ercolino and Massimo Fusillo’s study explores the dark side of empathetic responses to fiction, offering striking insights into its cognitive, ethical, and affective potential. Meticulously researched and supported by a broad range of close readings from multiple media, this book represents a major contribution to debates on narrative empathy. 

-Marco Caracciolo, Associate Professor of English and Literary Theory, Ghent University, Belgium

 

Macbeth, Caravaggio, Marina Abramovic and Walter White – This book traces “negative empathy” from the short duration of an image, a theatre play, and a performance to the long duration of novels and TV series, introducing empathy’s conflicted sibling and demonstrating how it provokes engagement and reflective distance in audiences.

-Karin Kukkonen, Professor, University of Oslo, Norway