Negative Empathy in Literature and the Arts explores how readers and viewers engage cognitively and affectively with ethically troubling artworks across literature, the visual and performing arts, and screen media. Drawing on aesthetics, cultural history and theory, psychology, and neuroscience, Stefano Ercolino and Massimo Fusillo introduce the concept of negative empathy to describe the ambivalent and destabilizing emotional responses elicited by representations of negativity in art. Rather than dismissing empathy as naïve, the authors argue for a more nuanced understanding of its darker forms and their cognitive and ethical value. Through a comparative and intermedial approach, the book analyzes case studies from Littells The Kindly Ones to Wilsons Deafman Glance; from Verdis Macbeth and Nitschs Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries to Caravaggios Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, Mapplethorpes X Portfolio, Kiefers The Seven Heavenly Palaces, Hanekes The White Ribbon, and Gilligans Breaking Badoffering a compelling new theory of aesthetic engagement.
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 Littells The Kindly Ones
3. In the Rhythm of the Scene
3.1 Tragic Lacerations
3.1.1 Empathy and Estrangement
3.1.2 Medeas Theatricality
3.1.3 Repeating the Abnormal Act: Robert Wilsons 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 Verdis Macbeth
3.3 Beyond Representation
3.3.1 Shadowy Actions
3.3.2 The Ecstasy of Ritual Dismemberment: Hermann Nitschs 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: Caravaggios Martyrdom of St. Matthew
5. The Multiplied Gaze
5.1 On Medusas Side
5.1.1 The Frozen Moment
5.1.2 Power Games
5.1.3 Aestheticizing the Extreme: Robert Mapplethorpes X Portfolio
5.2 Labyrinths of Perception
5.2.1 Immersive Environments
5.2.2 Among the Ruins of History: Anselm Kiefers 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 Hanekes The White Ribbon
6.2 Serial Pleasures
6.2.1 TV Antiheroes
6.2.2 Challenging Empathy: Vince Gilligans Breaking Bad
Bibliography
Index
Stefano Ercolino teaches literary theory and comparative literature at Ca Foscari University of Venice. He is the author of The Maximalist Novel: From Thomas Pynchons Gravitys Rainbow to Roberto Bolaños 2666 and The Novel-Essay, 18841947. 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.
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