The Ethics of Emotion: the Dialectic of Empathy And

THE ETHICS OF EMOTION: THE DIALECTIC OF EMPATHY AND ESTRANGEMENT IN POSTWAR GERMAN LITERATURE AND FILM A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF GERMAN STUDIES AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY STACY HARTMAN MAY 2015 iv Abstract Although the question of the role of empathy in our experience of fiction is currently an active one in psychology, most of the relevant research has been conducted on popular literature and film. This dissertation seeks to change that by using cognitive approaches to literature to examine how and why postmodern texts disrupt the reader or viewer’s expected empathic connection with the narrator or protagonist. Drawing on research by both cognitive psychologists and cognitive cultural theorists, I examine first how this disruption is accomplished, through techniques of both narrative and ethical estrangement, such as: narrative unreliability or non-cooperation; mindreading puzzles that can never be solved; moments of intimacy and empathy that are deliberately thwarted; and the presence of the disgusting or the grotesque in the text. Ultimately, I argue that in the wake of the disastrous failure of empathy that was World War II, postmodern writers and directors have sought to render moral judgment and decision-making conscious and deliberate, rather than unconscious and emotion-based. Principle authors and texts include Günter Grass’s Die Blechtrommel, W.G. Sebald’s Die Ausgewanderten and Austerlitz, and Michael Haneke’s films, Die Klavierspielerin, Das weiße Band, and Amour. This argument has implications for not only the field of cognitive cultural studies, but also for psychology, ethics, and even education. v Acknowledgements There are a number of people I would like to thank for being part of the journey of the last five years. I am grateful, first of all, to my committee for helping me shepherd this dissertation along to completion. Amir Eshel never failed to remind me about the importance of history and ethics for my project, and Blakey Vermeule provided valuable insight into the field of cognitive cultural studies, to which I came as a complete novice. Jamil Zaki from Psychology pointed me toward Paul Bloom’s work, which was an invaluable contribution. In addition to dissertation advice, Russell Berman also gave me many opportunities that have shaped and will continue to shape my career. The conclusion of this dissertation would certainly not exist in its current form without his influence. In addition to the faculty with whom I have worked closely, I was fortunate to write this dissertation as a member of DLCL graduate student committee. I am especially grateful to my fellow “Urban Junglers,” Jenny Strakovsky, Melissa Kagen, Gráinne Watson, and Caroline Egan, for their personal and professional support. I am also very glad to have found Clara Lewis, my writing tutor at the Hume Center for Writing and Speaking. Clara provided invaluable writing advice and a calm voice of reason during this last crazy year. Last but certainly not least, I want to thank my family and friends who were with me every step of the way through this. I was fortunate to do my PhD within driving distance of my parents and my sister, and that made an enormous difference to me, as did brunches, potlucks, Shabbat dinners, media nights, and hockey evenings with my friends in the area. I could not have done this without you. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: Reading the Postmodern Mind ................................................................ 8 Mindreading and Empathy ........................................................................................ 11 Mindreading and the Experience of Written Fiction ................................................. 14 Mindreading and the Experience of Visual Fiction .................................................. 19 Verfremdungseffekte: Empathy and the Non-Immersive Text .................................. 25 History’s Emotional Dog and Postmodernism’s Rational Tail ................................. 30 Chapter 2: Slippery as an Eel: The Rise of Skepticism in Grass's Die Blechtrommel ............................................................................................................... 40 Narrative Estrangement: Oskar the Uncooperative Narrator .................................... 44 Ethical Estrangement: The Alchemy of the Grotesque and the Disgusting .............. 55 Faith, Hope, and Love: The Complicity of Emotion ................................................ 68 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 74 Chapter 3: …sagte Austerlitz: W.G. Sebald's Mediated Narration and the Ethics of Empathy .................................................................................................................. 76 Mediated and Hypermediated Narration in Die Ausgewanderten and Austerlitz ..... 79 Reading the Mind Behind the Eyes: The Faces of History ....................................... 96 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 103 Chapter 4: Dark Fables, Impossible Puzzles, and Franz Schubert: The Redemption of Empathy in the Films of Michael Haneke .................................... 106 Cognitive Film Theory Revisited ............................................................................ 109 La Pianiste: Empathy and Estrangement Renegotiated .......................................... 114 The seeds of fascism sown early: Das weiße Band ................................................. 124 Amour: The Shock of Empathy ............................................................................... 134 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 140 In Conclusion: Critical Empathy and the Humanities Classroom ...................... 142 Feeling Sorry for Gregor Samsa ............................................................................. 145 Critical Empathy and Technology in the Humanities Classroom ........................... 149 Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 154 1 Introduction Questioning the primacy of empathy at our particular moment — a moment in which the need for more and greater empathy in an increasingly globalized world seems pressing — is a risky one. In a 2014 essay entitled “Against Empathy,” philosopher and psychologist Paul Bloom states that to do so is akin to declaring that one hates kittens. Empathy, traditional wisdom goes, is what allows us to be good people. It is the basis of compassion. It is what allows for neighborly love, agape. If people were educated in how to be more empathic, in how to exercise their imaginations so as to understand more thoroughly what it is like to be someone else, even someone very removed from themselves, the world would be a better place. And fiction, those who wish to defend the humanities as something worthy of study say, is part of that empathic education. Fiction teaches us to be more empathic, and it is therefore a force for good in the world. It appears that the first half of this statement may, in fact, be generally true. Studies by Raymond Mar and others, which I will discuss in greater detail in Chapter 1, have shown that those who read fiction do tend to be more empathic than those who do not. But this dissertation will question the leap that is made from the first claim to the second: that this makes fiction a force for good in the world. In fact, this dissertation will question whether empathy itself is, truly, a force for good in the world. The fiction, both written and visual, that I will discuss in the following chapters, indicates something very different. In a wide variety of ways, Grass’s Die Blechtrommel, Sebald’s Die Ausgewanderten and Austerlitz, and Haneke’s La Pianiste, Das weiße Band, and Amour demonstrate that empathy is, in fact, deeply problematic as a moral lens. They demonstrate that we are better off cultivating an ethic of skepticism rather than an ethic of empathy if we truly want to live ethical lives. And they do so not by inviting empathy, as so much realist fiction does, but rather by disrupting it, both narratively and ethically. It is no coincidence that the works I will consider all originate with writers and directors from post-1945 Germany. Beginning with the emergence of psychoanalysis 2 at the end of the 19th century, humanity stared into the abyss of its own mind and realized it had no idea what might be looking back. The development of cognitive neuroscience today has only made us more certain that we do not truly know our own minds. Twentieth century literary movements therefore distinguish themselves from previous centuries through their fascination with the unconscious and the irrational, and through their concern for that which is suppressed, unknowable, or unspeakable. It is the crevasses and chasms of the human mind, the dark, secret places inhabited by sex and violence, fear and disgust, that the art of the twentieth century insisted on making its own. And there was plenty of violence, fear, and disgust to be found in Germany after the Second World War — not to mention, I will

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