In Compassion, ten scholars draw on literature, psychoanalysis, and social history to provide an archive of cases and genealogies of compassion. Together these essays demonstrate how "being compassionate" is shaped by historical specificity and social training, and how the idea of compassion takes place in scenes that are anxious, volatile, surprising, and even contradictory.
Lauren Berlant is Professor of English at the University of Chicago. Among her books are The Queen of America Goesto Washington City and The Anatomy of Fantasy.
Introduction: Compassion (and Withholding) Lauren Berlant 1. Compassion Marjorie Garber 2. Much of Madness and More of Sin: Compassion, for Ligeia Candace Vogler 3. Calculating Compassion Kathleen Woodward 4. Poor Hetty Neil Hertz 5. Moving Pictures: George Eliot and Melodrama Carolyn Williams 6. Provoking George Eliot Mary Ann O'Farrell 7. Compassion's Compulsion Lee Edelman 8. Cosmetic Surgeons of the Social: Darwin, Freud and Wells and the Limits of Sympathy on The Island of Dr. Moreau Neville Hoad 9. Suffering and Thinking: The Scandal of Tone in Eichmann in Jerusalem Deborah Nelson