"The Skin of Another": Empathetic Dissonance in Twentieth and Twenty-First-Century Poetry after Crisis

This dissertation examines the representation of empathy in contemporary poetry after crisis, specifically poetry after the Holocaust, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and Hurricane Katrina. Through comparative close readings merged with interdisciplinary theory from philosophy, psychology, cultural theory, history and literary theory, and trauma studies, I juxtapose a genocide, a terrorist act, and a natural disaster amplified by racial politics and human disregard in order to consider empathy from multiple perspectives, in a range of cultural and political milieus. The events that I examine and their consequences are themselves, at least in part, a result of a lack of empathy on the part of perpetrators and bystanders. As such, my dissertation questions what happens to empathy in poetry after events at the limits of empathy. At the same time, I consider the potential of empathy to act as what Jonathan Boyarin, in his Storm from Paradise: The Politics of Jewish Memory, labels symbolic violence: by shifting the emotional focus from the receiver of empathy to oneself, the empathizer may appropriate the others emotional stance. Significantly, texts that engage with violent events, such as the ones that my research forefronts, must be doubly wary of the violent possibilities of empathy, as these possibilities can reaffirm the historical relations between victim and perpetrator. I argue that, recognizing both the possibilities and dangers of empathy, the texts that I consider variously invite and refuse empathy. These works display, thus, what I term empathetic dissonance. My research proposes that empathetic dissonance in the poems that I examine reflects the texts struggle with the question of the value and possibility of empathy in the face of the crises to which these texts respond. The three chapters The Unsaid, The Unhere, and The Ungod that make up my dissertation consider empathetic dissonance through language, witnessing, and theology, respectively. Some of the poets whose works my research engages include Charlotte Delbo, Dionne Brand, Niyi Osundare, Charles Reznikoff, Robert Fitterman, Wisawa Szymborska, Cynthia Hogue, Claudia Rankine, Paul Celan, Dan Pagis, Lucille Clifton, and Katie Ford.