‘The Arithmetic of Compassion’: Rethinking the Politics of Photography
@article{Johnson2011TheAO, title={‘The Arithmetic of Compassion’: Rethinking the Politics of Photography}, author={James Turner Johnson}, journal={British Journal of Political Science}, year={2011}, volume={41}, pages={621 - 643} }
Compassion, theorists from Arendt to Nussbaum suggest, carries an ineluctable pressure to identify with individual suffering. The very idea of a politics of compassion verges on incoherence. Politics typically demands attention to the aggregate and it is just there that compassion falters. This is a problem for critics addressing the politics of photography, who typically presume that the point of photographs must be to elicit compassion among viewers. But a proper understanding of compassion…
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