Radical sympathy
One of the main questions or lines of inquiry within the communities in movement project is to think communities less as enclaves of identity and more as conduits to cooperation; community as what enables the articulation of shared concerns while also spiriting modes of alliance building and experimental solidarity. What might be some of the forces or channels through which conduits of cooperation find expression? And that give way to modes of alliance building that equally care for the struggles of internal communal effort? Ideas of radical sympathy are explored in this context, understanding sympathy as a position of caring-for that moves from interpersonal compassion to impersonal force; and that passes across both direct and indirect forms of care, from the immediate and intimate to the distant and global.
Such ideas, or “sympathetic imaginaries”, are also posed in relation to thinking care in the context of the covid-19 pandemic and climate crisis. In what sense do we relate to the scale of such global and planetary challenges? How is it possible to care-for such all-encompassing crises, to draw forth compassionate action against such overwhelming catastrophes? Radical sympathy is envisioned as one type of framework for considering such challenges, understanding sympathy as what may move from interpersonal care to global and planetary sensing and action.
Radical sympathy brings us to the body, to the interdependencies of embodied life, in terms of feeling for others, and feeling oneself as part of others; it is sympathetic in terms of sensing the struggles of others as the struggles of oneself. Yet, it’s imagined as something else as well. Radical sympathy is not necessarily intra-active, or figured by way of a co-constitutive move; it is not necessarily about individuality in terms of being-involved, or coming close. Rather, it additionally performs on the level of caring-for which works across uneven or thin relationalities, for instance, in relation to those who cannot care for themselves – who cannot participate fully in a co-constitutive agency; or, caring-for that which is without personhood, for instance planetary life and vegetal forms; or that tries to work on a scale that is beyond oneself, beyond an experience of proximity and address, but which one may nonetheless work on behalf of.
As Stephen Darwall argues, sympathy is a feeling or emotion that responds to an apparent threat or obstacle to another’s well-being. To be sympathetic is to feel compassion for someone else's challenges. In contrast to empathy, as feeling what others feel, sympathy is responsive and the basis for action. Sympathy leads to a position of “caring-for” – or, the one who cares, where one works on behalf of another’s well-being. Sympathy is motivated by a sense for the vulnerabilities human bodies share, and which some are made to experience more than others.
Through such understanding, Darwall accents the ways in which sympathy performs on the level of personal compassion – to feel for the plight of others – in such a way that also positions well-being “categorically”: from a specific person – I sympathize with what you struggle with – to persons in general – it is necessary to address the difficulties certain communities face for example. Sympathy comes to extend beyond a first-person narrative; rather, one produces a third-person account by way of sympathy, where I as an author or agent take on the role of telling a different human story: I give my voice so others may speak through me.
From this framework we may start to appreciate sympathy as the basis for action, for care – or, sympathy as what supports a disposition or sensibility of caring-for, especially by moving one beyond one's immediate circle. And that might be the thing which gives radical support for contending with the scale and impersonality of global and planetary crises, all of which requires more of ourselves.