“A compassionate city is an uncomfortable city”?: Polarized feelings and the (geo)politics of positivity

Keywords: urban politics, affect, political subjectivity
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 22

Abstract

From cognitive science to interfaith political organizing and from self-help therapeutics to philanthrocapitalist projects, compassion has emerged as a potent object of identification and aspiration in the contemporary moment across a number of contexts. This paper critically examines ongoing efforts to promote compassion and build an international network of ‘compassionate cities’ associated with the affirmation of an international Charter for Compassion. Drawing on participant observation at compassionate city network events, interviews with participants in compassionate city projects, and an analysis of key discourses encountered in the research, the paper analyzes the simultaneously global, urban, and intimate aspirations of compassion advocates, as well as how participants construct the problems toward which compassion is meant to be a response. Taking political polarization and the resurgence of right-wing populisms as one example of such a problem, I examine how a focus on compassion—understood as a universal capacity that can be cultivated to maximize ‘human flourishing’—tends to support particular kinds of ‘positive’ political subjectivities and projects intended to ‘bring down the temperature’ on polarized feelings. Pointing to the limits of such problems/projects, the paper argues for the importance of imagining and enacting more uncomfortable forms of compassion through an engagement with feminist care politics and abolitionist thought.