Feeling, Affect, Exposure : Ethical (In)capacity, the Sympathetic Imagination, and J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace

Dickinson, Philip (2013) Feeling, Affect, Exposure : Ethical (In)capacity, the Sympathetic Imagination, and J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace. Mosaic, 46 (4). pp. 1-19. ISSN 0027-1276

Abstract

This essay considers the role of feeling and affect in theories of the sympathetic imagination through readings of Martha Nussbaum, Geoffrey Hartman, and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. I explore how the sympathetic imagination is irreducibly contaminated by unstable affective states that threaten its viability as a humanist ethic.