Sympathetic Sentiments develops an innovative interdisciplinary framework to explore the implications of living in a culture of feeling that seems ill at ease with itself, one in which sentiments are frequently denounced for being sentimental and self-indulgent.
These tensions are traced back to the inheritance of the eighteenth century, enabling us to identify a distinctive 'spectacle of sympathy', in which sympathy entails public forms of expression whereby being on show is both a condition of the authenticity of such affects and of their capacity to be masked and simulated. This, John Jervis suggests, is at the root of a range of controversies central to modern life, art and culture, including contemporary debates around trauma and compassion fatigue. Connected to these debates is the issue of modern sensationalism, discussed here and elaborated in a companion volume: Sensational Subjects: The Dramatization of Experience in the Modern World, which is published simultaneously by Bloomsbury.
Описание: "Sympathetic Sentiments "develops an innovative interdisciplinary framework to explore the implications of living in a 'culture of feeling' that seems ill at ease with itself, one in which 'sentiments' are frequently denounced for being 'sentimental' and self-indulgent. This is traced back to the inheritance of the eighteenth century, enabling us to identify a distinctive 'spectacle of sympathy' in which sympathy seems inherently to entail public forms of expression whereby being 'on show' is both a condition of the authenticity of such affects "and" of their capacity to be masked and simulated - hence stimulating controversy, but also the exploration of the vicarious dimensions of modern experience so central to modern literature, art and culture. The implications of all this are further explored in the context of current debates over the display of trauma as the language of sympathetic engagement, and the alleged prevalence of 'compassion fatigue' in the era of media sensationalism. Overall, the book uncovers the patterns that both reproduce our capacity for 'sympathetic sentiments' while revealing the inherent underlying tensions.
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