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‘The Arithmetic of Compassion’: Rethinking the Politics of Photography

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  • Johnson, James

Abstract

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 makes this presumption highly problematic. The role of compassion in exemplary writings on the politics of photography reflects a fixation with ‘emblematic’ individual subjects in ‘classic’ American documentary practice, which prevents critics from properly grasping the best of contemporary documentary. The conclusion is that promoting solidarity provides a more plausible, if elusive, aim for the politics of photography.

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  • Johnson, James, 2011. "‘The Arithmetic of Compassion’: Rethinking the Politics of Photography," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 41(3), pages 621-643, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:41:y:2011:i:03:p:621-643_00
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