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Narratives of Non-normative Bodies and Minds
This volume calls for a Narratology of Diversity by investigating narratives of non-normative bodies and minds. It explores mental health representations in literature, including neurodiversity, the body-mind nexus, and embodied non-normativities, therein emphasizing the importance of understanding diverse psychological conditions as represented in narratives. The contributions include perspectives from a wide variety of scholars of European, North American, and comparative literature and culture.
While post-classical narratology has evolved through phases of diversification and consolidation, this volume represents innovation in understanding narrative development to embrace new areas of social awareness, including gendered narratologies (specifically feminist and queer narratologies) and post-colonial criticism, paving the way for a more inclusive narratology.
While post-classical narratology has evolved through phases of diversification and consolidation, this volume represents innovation in understanding narrative development to embrace new areas of social awareness, including gendered narratologies (specifically feminist and queer narratologies) and post-colonial criticism, paving the way for a more inclusive narratology.
Narratives of Non-normative Bodies and Minds
This volume calls for a Narratology of Diversity by investigating narratives of non-normative bodies and minds. It explores mental health representations in literature, including neurodiversity, the body-mind nexus, and embodied non-normativities, therein emphasizing the importance of understanding diverse psychological conditions as represented in narratives. The contributions include perspectives from a wide variety of scholars of European, North American, and comparative literature and culture.
While post-classical narratology has evolved through phases of diversification and consolidation, this volume represents innovation in understanding narrative development to embrace new areas of social awareness, including gendered narratologies (specifically feminist and queer narratologies) and post-colonial criticism, paving the way for a more inclusive narratology.
While post-classical narratology has evolved through phases of diversification and consolidation, this volume represents innovation in understanding narrative development to embrace new areas of social awareness, including gendered narratologies (specifically feminist and queer narratologies) and post-colonial criticism, paving the way for a more inclusive narratology.
Narratives and Mental Health offers a forum for dialogue between the arts, humanities and other disciplines interested in mental health and well-being.
Narrative is a central tool for meaning-making. Yet, its relevance has long been sidelined in the mental health sector including psychiatry, clinical psychology, medicine and social work.
To explore the intersection of narratives and mental health, the peer-reviewed book series takes an interdisciplinary approach and accommodates studies which investigate, for one, the uses and usefulness, but also the possible limitations of narrative in mental health care settings. The series is also very interested in studies that examine mental health issues in the representation, conceptualization, medialization and dissemination of mental health-narratives in areas as varied as literature and life-writing, the arts and film, journalism and (oral) history, digital and graphic storytelling, and many more.
Monographs and themed volumes are invited that include perspectives from comparative literary studies, history, narratology, psychology and philosophy, amongst others.
Authors are cordially invited to submit proposals for manuscripts to the publisher at BRILL, Masja Horn.
Please advise our Guidelines for a Book Proposal.
Narrative is a central tool for meaning-making. Yet, its relevance has long been sidelined in the mental health sector including psychiatry, clinical psychology, medicine and social work.
To explore the intersection of narratives and mental health, the peer-reviewed book series takes an interdisciplinary approach and accommodates studies which investigate, for one, the uses and usefulness, but also the possible limitations of narrative in mental health care settings. The series is also very interested in studies that examine mental health issues in the representation, conceptualization, medialization and dissemination of mental health-narratives in areas as varied as literature and life-writing, the arts and film, journalism and (oral) history, digital and graphic storytelling, and many more.
Monographs and themed volumes are invited that include perspectives from comparative literary studies, history, narratology, psychology and philosophy, amongst others.
Authors are cordially invited to submit proposals for manuscripts to the publisher at BRILL, Masja Horn.
Please advise our Guidelines for a Book Proposal.
Editor:
Empathy is sometimes –for unfathomable reasons– a surprisingly evasive emotion. It is indeed a problem open to discussion. It can be particularly problematic since, for one thing, it is in appearance the emotion responsible for stitching together a shared experience with our common fellow. It is the emotion essential to bridging the gap between subjects – to making a community. Some answers in this volume have their place of reference in the welcoming chambers of Mansfield College, at the University of Oxford (UK). The Empathy Project held its third Global Meeting within the premises of ye olde constituent college at Mansfield Road from Thursday 14th to Saturday 16th of July 2016. This volume looks for the common ground between both the results of the conducted research and our experiences: Digital Media ideas on the subject worked just fine elbow to elbow with those proposed by fields like Nursing or Health and Social Care; and Psychiatry, Psychology and Philosophy got along quite well with the lines of inquiry of Education, Literature and Dramatic Performance.
Contributors are Victoria Aizkalna, Rosa Elena Belvedresi, Giovanna Costantini, Ricardo Gutiérrez Aguilar, Irina Ionita, Nina Lex, Gerardo López Sastre, Barış Mete, Paulus Pimomo, Johannes Rohbeck, Judy Rollins, Josefa Ros Velasco and Christopher J. Staley.
Contributors are Victoria Aizkalna, Rosa Elena Belvedresi, Giovanna Costantini, Ricardo Gutiérrez Aguilar, Irina Ionita, Nina Lex, Gerardo López Sastre, Barış Mete, Paulus Pimomo, Johannes Rohbeck, Judy Rollins, Josefa Ros Velasco and Christopher J. Staley.
Editor:
Empathy is sometimes –for unfathomable reasons– a surprisingly evasive emotion. It is indeed a problem open to discussion. It can be particularly problematic since, for one thing, it is in appearance the emotion responsible for stitching together a shared experience with our common fellow. It is the emotion essential to bridging the gap between subjects – to making a community. Some answers in this volume have their place of reference in the welcoming chambers of Mansfield College, at the University of Oxford (UK). The Empathy Project held its third Global Meeting within the premises of ye olde constituent college at Mansfield Road from Thursday 14th to Saturday 16th of July 2016. This volume looks for the common ground between both the results of the conducted research and our experiences: Digital Media ideas on the subject worked just fine elbow to elbow with those proposed by fields like Nursing or Health and Social Care; and Psychiatry, Psychology and Philosophy got along quite well with the lines of inquiry of Education, Literature and Dramatic Performance.
Contributors are Victoria Aizkalna, Rosa Elena Belvedresi, Giovanna Costantini, Ricardo Gutiérrez Aguilar, Irina Ionita, Nina Lex, Gerardo López Sastre, Barış Mete, Paulus Pimomo, Johannes Rohbeck, Judy Rollins, Josefa Ros Velasco and Christopher J. Staley.
Contributors are Victoria Aizkalna, Rosa Elena Belvedresi, Giovanna Costantini, Ricardo Gutiérrez Aguilar, Irina Ionita, Nina Lex, Gerardo López Sastre, Barış Mete, Paulus Pimomo, Johannes Rohbeck, Judy Rollins, Josefa Ros Velasco and Christopher J. Staley.
Author:
Abstract
If time is money and the human being an endless range of the homo œconomicus figure who maximizes profit/pleasure by minimizing losses/pain, isn’t empathy eminently anti-utilitarian? Isn’t the effort to connect with the Other, by putting oneself in the place of the Other in order to understand their perspective from their point of view, a risk of minimizing profit/pleasure by maximizing losses/pain? And isn’t that a promising prospect? Stemming from this questioning, the paper tells the story of an interdisciplinary doctoral research in development studies on the nomadic concept of empathy. Beyond inter- or trans-disciplinary, empathy becomes an undisciplined concept, which not only navigates from a discipline to the next, but also questions the ethics and epistemology of every step of the way by taking the researcher into unexpected conceptual, geographical and geopolitical territories. In this case, it moves conceptually from anti-utilitarianism to decoloniality; geographically, from Geneva to Quebec and Ontario; and geopolitically, from a Western perspective to Indigenous loci of enunciation. Through three hypostases, empathy raises some interesting ethical and methodological questions in the realm of social sciences. While trying to answer the initial question of the pertinence of an anti-utilitarian type of empathy by exploring what seemed to be from afar an original case study, the concept took the researcher to Canada, to the Iroquois nations and their notion of responsibility towards the 7th generation into the future. However, when confronted with the complex colonial dimension of the relationship with the Indigenous peoples, the concept became a heuristic tool for the researcher who had to redefine her own capacity to empathize with her interlocutors, which in turn redefined her entire project. Undisciplined, empathy finally became an ethical decolonial practice, helping the researcher build unexpected bridges between several schools of thought and perceive a reciprocal, respectful and responsible dialogue.
Author:
Abstract
This chapter focuses on the relational problems in empathy at the collective and individual levels in order to explore the generally neglected subject of responsibility for empathy-related behavior. The idea is that examining the relational problems at both levels would reveal probable causes and point to possible solutions. I use a fictional short story by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe (“Dead Men’s Path”) to draw attention to the problems of group relations. Achebe’s story deals with power relations under colonialism which, by extension, can be made to stand in for the all-too-familiar phenomenon of dominant groups trying to change, even makeover, a minority’s way of life. For obstacles in individual relations I refer to a real-life event, the trial of Khmer Rouge leader Duch for war crimes, and the role played by his victim-turned-witness Francois Bizot. Bizot’s empathic connection with his captor Duch is not singular in history, but it is extremely rare so I use it as a reverse example of the universal human problem of refusing to recognize the supposed ‘other’ in ourselves. Taken together, Achebe’s story and Bizot’s part in Duch’s trial can help us understand what being a responsible community and a responsible individual might mean in relations that involve empathy. But any deontological exploration would require a basis for determining responsibility, so I tentatively propose the basis for empathic responsibility to be the twin obligation of a) recognizing the supposed radical ‘other’ in oneself (say, the torturer living inside the victim – in potential) and b) accepting human diversity, which would necessitate negotiating differences with others as a salient mode of becoming human together. 1
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Abstract
Today there is an emergent movement in hospitals led by artists dedicated to creating unique work designed specifically to promote positive outcomes for patients, family, visitors, and staff. The style of this contemporary ‘purpose built’ art may be abstract, realistic, fanciful, ambiguous, or on occasion, threatening. Research to date is scant and primarily anecdotal, yet findings indicate that patients use these artists’ work in very specific ways and find such artwork helpful in coping with healthcare settings and experiences. The purpose of this international study, the author’s Scholar project at The Institute for Integrative Health, is to identify this type of art in hospitals, and to examine the perceptions of the individuals who create, choose, or use this art; the principles that guide their creation and selection process; and evidence of the impact on individuals exposed to the art. An early finding of this research is the work of Boston artist Joan Drescher. Drescher was commissioned to create a series of murals for the oncology waiting area and treatment rooms at the Floating Hospital for Children in Boston. The ‘Symbols of Courage’ murals depict the journey that children and families travel, from feeling well before diagnosis, to not feeling well and diagnosis, through the entire treatment protocol. She hung her sketches in the doctors’ conference room to give children, their families, and staff the opportunity to review them and verify themes. Children have used Drescher’s images to communicate feelings about their illness or hospitalization. When they look at the murals, children say they feel that someone understands where they are. Parents sense being seen and heard, saying that at last someone knows what they are going through. Hospital staff report having a better understanding of what patients and families undergo.
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Abstract
‘Empathy’ is a key concept in epistemology of history usually applied to understand other’s actions. The issue is linked to Dilthey’s hermeneutical theory, the starting point where all the discussions about historical understanding are coming from. The aim of this paper is to consider the concept of ‘empathy’ and to explore its connections with notions like trauma and suffering of others. We will analyze LaCapra’s ‘empathic unsettlement’ in order to see if it offers a plausible way to adopt empathy in history without falling in the typical misunderstandings (allegedly mindreading abilities, esoteric spiritual contact, and so on) and keeping the true-claims safe. Recovering some ideas connected to empathy would be helpful so as not to miss the point that history is a product of human agency. Obviously, historical processes involve contextual conditions which are difficult for agents to change. Some processes are so radically new, such as traumatic events, that alternative approaches are required to unfold their complex meanings. With the intention of assessing the fruitfulness of LaCapra’s theory to reach historical (and empathic) understanding we will propose an example taken not from trauma studies but from Argentinean history in order to evaluate the possibility of a broader scope of the ‘empathic unsettlement.’
Author:
Abstract
If empathy means to put oneself in someone else’s shoes, it plays a great role in education. Teachers are supposed to be empathic because they have to understand the needs and the emotions of his/her pupils in order to make them successful in terms of learning and autonomy. Their ability consists on creating a positive atmosphere inside the classroom thanks to their attitude; this helps the students to cooperate thus enhancing the process of learning. From a survey conducted in seven classes of students between 11 and 14 years old, in which the teenagers were asked to answer some questions related to what empathy was for them, how important it was between mates and with teachers, and what they would have done to improve it, it has emerged that empathy is necessary in class, either between mates or with teachers; students have given some personal definitions about empathy and some advices to the teachers in order to improve their attitude, among others for example, to be more open-minded and talk to the students more often. Several people think that empathy is a natural ability, but, as the Australian comedian, Tim Minchin declared, empathy is intuitive, but is also something you can work on, intellectually. That is why professionals should work on how to acquire practiced skills. This chapter gives some advices to the teachers in order to strengthen their abilities as empathic and successful teachers. One of the approaches considered in this analysis is the flipped classroom, where pupils have the opportunity to prepare and to present lessons thanks to the support of the teacher and of the technological instruments. In this context, empathy plays a decisive role because students are really asked to put themselves in the teachers’ shoes, either in terms of emotions or in terms of skills.
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Abstract
Empathy in narrative fiction is broadly defined as the capability of readers to share the feelings or the experiences of characters. It is already indisputable that all forms of character identification in fictional narratives essentially require empathy. In other words, readers have empathy with fictional characters whose experiences they personally share. In addition to this, readers have empathy especially with protagonists for they spend most of their time dealing with them during the course of reading. What should specifically be underlined here, moreover, is the fact that empathy not only emerges but also fully develops between readers and characters mostly in narratives that have traditional characteristics in terms of their plot structures and character development. Non-traditional narratives either interrupt or exactly block the possibilities of the rise of shared feelings between readers and characters by reason of a number of elements. As empathy in fictional narratives necessarily builds on the spoken descriptions of the events by the narrator, any divergence from traditional roles of the narrator – especially the role of the narrator as a truthful and reliable entity for the reader – could possibly affect the nature of interactions between readers and characters. Instead of empathy, it might then be the disagreement and the disunity that would better define what readers feel in such situations. The British novelists John Robert Fowles’ The Collector (1963) and Jean Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince (1973) are two fictional narratives where readers become unable to have empathy with the protagonists as a result of the experimental narrative structures of the novels.
Author:
Abstract
The subject of empathy and the role it has in forming a well-functioning society has become widely discussed since the advances of modern technology of functional magnetic resonance imagery (fMRI) give us the possibility to read human brain and track what parts of brain respond to certain stimuli. High, therefore, is the temptation of falling into a rabbit hole of labeling certain parts of physical human brain to be the key to understanding of a complex world of human mind and consciousness, of feelings and emotions. In the present article the focus is on understanding phenomenon of empathy, and also to the downsides of the cult of empathy. Saying this, by no means I want to diminish the value of findings and discoveries of neurosciences, however I am going to argue that mapping the brain is not the key to understanding mind, and that empathy is not the key to the solution of conflicts, nor it leads to stronger societal bonds. What does, then? There is no one, nor two or three good answers. There are plenty of ways to approach the subject, and any of them are right and wrong to certain extend. However, it might be safe to say that going back to the roots is the place to begin. Complex mechanism of society is based on interpersonal relationships of individuals. Individuals are shaped by the society they live in. To understand how this process intertwines and where is the place for the empathy, if it is at all needed, in the present article is approached through the phenomenon of conceptual schemes and consciousness in the theories of Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett. Through understanding of the ways of processing and storing information for further use and decision-making, we will see what are the dangers of over-using empathy, and argue for usefulness of rational compassion.