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‘Literature can be a window or a mirror’, I tell my students. We are studying children’s literature as part of their first year of training to be primary and special education teachers. My students and I have freshly emerged in the world from two years of lockdowns and online learning. They tell me about their struggles with making time to read. The majority of my students do not consider themselves to ‘be’ readers. In class discussion, an outspoken student asks, ‘What’s the point of reading fiction when I can look at reality?’. Even though my literature teacher reflex is to rebut this claim, I understand this student’s frustration with stories in our dishonest world. I ask him what he thinks fiction is for—‘entertainment?’, he replies. I wonder what ‘reality’ my student looks at and whether or not most of this looking takes place on a screen. Another student responds, ‘what about empathy?’. In my best teacher voice I ask, ‘yes, what about it?’

The idea that literature can be a window or a mirror, particularly in relation to education, originates from the work of Rudine Sims Bishop in her influential article about children’s literature, ‘Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors’ (1990). She argued that children need exposure to diverse texts so they can see themselves and others as they form their identities in relation to the stories they encounter at school. This practice of looking—looking at oneself, looking into something/somewhere new at others—is situated as a form of empathy. The reader is invited to look and then apply this new knowledge, gleaned from looking, to their understanding of the experience of themselves or others. In the popular imaginary, empathy and literature share a special bond (Zunshine 2006, 2022). Enabling this relationship in the classroom is seen to be a key component of education (see Nussbaum, 2010; Keen, 2007; Arnold, 2005).

Because of my professional purpose, I believe in this vision of literature. It is part of my cache of classroom catchphrases, and most of the time, I mean it. However, I know in practice that the complexity of empathy complicates this vision. The mirror may be smudged, producing an unclear reflection of the self, or the window may be too foggy to see through, obscuring the reality of what takes place inside. The blurring of our vision when we read literature for empathy is a risk. While I see this risk as worth taking, I want to think through the work of Megan Boler to support a complication of the window/mirror argument. Her 1999 book, Feeling Power: Emotions and Education, tackles the assumptions regarding the empathic power of literature, particularly in relation to education and the overwhelming perception that the value of literature in a classroom is its altruistic potential through empathy. Boler’s theorising emerged partly in response to the work of Martha Nussbaum and her popular philosophical arguments involving the pro-social and empathic power of studying literature.

In the pages to follow, I explore the argument for and against an empathic approach to literature in the classroom. To begin, I situate the ‘for’ argument within the context of Nussbaum’s work. In the middle of the chapter, I discuss Boler’s position on empathy and work through her definitions of ‘passive empathy’ and ‘testimonial reading’ to help me think about the pitfalls and potential of empathy in the literary classroom. To conclude, I situate these arguments in the context of the contemporary neoliberal educational context and draw on Liam Semler’s term, ‘SysEd’, which describes the current climate of education being shaped in the likeness of neoliberal systems. I argue that passive empathy is enabled by SysEd while the opportunity for testimonial reading is increasingly constrained. We need the time, space, and allowance for complex classroom conversations involving the empathic power of literature and the way texts invite us to reflect on our understanding of ourselves and others. The outcome of testimonial reading is not easily measured by a standards authority, high-stakes external examination, or performance assessment. In the conclusion, I propose a vision for the mirror/window argument where testimonial reading and a reflective knowledge of passive empathy are features of our classroom discourse, particularly in the education of pre-service teachers at university.

Thinking with Nussbaum

The philosophy of Martha Nussbaum is perhaps the most influential when it comes to arguing a correlation between empathy, altruism, and literary reading. Her books, Love’s Knowledge (1992), Poetic Justice (1995), Upheavals of Thought (2001) and Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010), frame reading literature as crucial to the maintenance of civil democratic society where the interiority of individual life is imagined and appreciated as having worth and meaning. It is in the context of perspective taking that Nussbaum situates her definition of empathy ‘which involves an imaginative reconstruction of the experience of the sufferer’ (2001, p. 327).

Nussbaum forms her belief in the ethical value of literature alongside Wayne Booth (1989). Both argue that an approach to ethical criticism does not need to have specific motivations or means of influence. They suggest the relationship between text and reader is like a friendship and thus an important part of the reader’s life which informs and instructs them, allowing room for movement and change along the way (1990, pp. 250–256). Perspective taking and the evaluation of situations and others from the perspective of fictional characters are central to this notion. Importantly, Nussbaum distinguishes empathy from compassion, and she does not see empathy as a constant reliable means for securing compassionate change in others (2001, pp. 328–329). However, she does link the two. It does not always lead to compassion but may achieve it by drawing attention to suffering others or understanding the other through comparing their experiences with one’s own. For her, ‘empathy is a mental ability highly relevant to compassion, although it is itself both fallible and morally neutral’ (2001, p. 333). That being said, she does concede that a society of ‘empathyless’ individuals is worse than a society that regularly practices empathy (2001, p. 334), a view widely accepted yet questionably applied in our world.

Nussbaum makes the case for the teaching of empathy and compassion through the reading of literary fiction at school (2001, p. 426). She argues that ‘public education at every level should cultivate the ability to imagine the experiences of others and to participate in their sufferings’, citing Dickens’s Hard Times as an example of the way students can ‘see the human meaning of facts that might otherwise have seemed remote’ (2001, p. 426). Nussbaum argues for the humanities to occupy a ‘large place in education from elementary school on up, as children master more and more of the appropriate judgments and become able to extend their empathy to more people and types of people’ (2001, p. 426). She emphasises the value of the ‘realist social novel’ for promoting empathy in students, citing Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) as having the potential to ‘inspire an empathy closely linked to reasonable judgments of seriousness and extended concern’ (2001, p. 431). In her discussion of the value of the teaching and learning of literary texts, namely, social realist fiction, Nussbaum argues for the altruistic potential of empathy rather than her original conception of empathy as neutral.

In Not For Profit Nussbaum further explores claims from Upheavals regarding empathy and literature. She sees the increasing marketisation of the university and the financial strain on the humanities as threats to our society’s ability to empathise and push back against the systematic oppression of others in an increasingly divided world. As previously discussed in Upheavals, a pedagogy of compassion can be achieved through the teaching and reading of literary texts in Nussbaum’s model. At the heart of this pedagogy is the question of who students are most and least likely to empathise with (see Maxwell, 2006). For Nussbaum, texts must be assigned according to the student cohort in order to broaden their horizons and encourage them to empathise with others from diverse backgrounds (2001, pp. 429–431). Her proposal echoes the window/mirror argument that if students are exposed to diverse texts, then they will broaden their empathic horizons through exposure. However, the assumption that this model results in altruism is challenged by Megan Boler.

Thinking with Boler

While the definition of empathy is contested across a range of fields (see Keen, 2007; Cuff et al., 2016), Megan Boler identifies empathy by its belonging ‘to a class of “altruistic emotions” that go by different names’ like ‘pity’ and ‘compassion’ (1999, p. 157). Her definition responds to Nussbaum’s coupling of empathy with altruism by way of ‘fellow feeling’, ‘what I call empathy and Nussbaum calls compassion is probably best understood as our common-sense usage of sympathy’ (1999, p. 158). However, Boler argues Nussbaum’s argument for empathic reading is a naïve notion with potentially harmful effects. This is in part due to her argument that ‘empathetic identification is more about me than you’ in the way it requires an identification of the other in the self, as well as an approximation of experience and perspective taking (1999, pp. 158–159). She points out ‘that the uninterrogated identification assumed by the faith in empathy is founded on a binary self/other that situates the self/reader unproblematically as judge’ (1999, p. 159). This is problematic because it removes the complexity of power structures and social context from the empathetic equation and foregrounds assumptions about value. Empathy further requires our ability to know we are not the one who is actually having the experience. The window metaphor is problematised by Boler’s reminder that as the readerly subject we are looking not experiencing:

In popular and philosophical conceptions, empathy requires identification. I take your perspective and claim that I can know your experience through mine. By definition, empathy also recognises our difference—not profoundly, but enough to distinguish that I am not in fact the one suffering at this moment. (1999, p. 159)

For Boler, an awareness of one’s difference is crucial in order to manage the risk of setting up a ‘binary power relationship of self/other that threatens to consume and annihilate the very differences that permit empathy’ (1999, p. 159). If the reader refrains from questioning their contextual relation to the empathic subject, a range of risks emerge. These risks relate to how the reader understands themselves in relation to the subject they are invited to empathise with. For example, a self/other binary may be validated by identifying with ‘the oppressor or with more complicated protagonists’ (1999, pp. 159–160).

Passive Empathy

A risk of literary education is something Boler terms ‘passive empathy’. Passive empathy refers to:

Those instances where our concern is directed to a fairly distant other, whom we cannot directly help. Some philosophers have it that in such cases the sufficient expression of concern is to wish the other well. I shall argue that passive empathy is not a sufficient educational practice. At stake is not only the ability to empathize with the very distant other, but to recognise oneself as implicated in the social forces that create the climate of obstacles the other must confront. (1999, p. 158)

Boler uses Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel MAUS as a case study to discuss the problem of passive empathy and suggests a resolution to this problem. She cites written responses to MAUS from students detailing their enjoyment of reading the text without feeling anger about the horrors of the Holocaust and their belief in mastery over the subject matter following reading (1999, p. 161). In light of the students’ commentary she asks ‘What does it mean to experience a pleasurable read and be spared the emotions of rage, blame and guilt? In what ways is passive empathy related to the dehumanization strategies used to justify and represent war?’ (1999, pp. 161–162). For Boler, the belief held by her students that they understand the experience of Holocaust survivors through reading supports her critique of Nussbaum. Boler locates the flaw in believing all students will have a reliably nuanced understanding and compassionate response to others as a result of reading about them. In summation, her argument regarding passive empathy is that it ‘absolves the reader through the denial of power relations. The confessional relationship relies on suffering that is not referred beyond the individual to the social’ (1999, p. 162).

Testimonial Reading

As an alternative to passive empathy Boler presents a pedagogical approach called ‘testimonial reading’ (1999). She argues the ‘primary difference between passive empathy and testimonial reading is the responsibility borne by the reader’ (1999, p. 162). For Boler, in order for students to move beyond the realm of passive empathy they must take on a ‘collective educational responsibility’ by evaluating and questioning their own responses to reading the text (1999, p. 162). She describes this process as being akin to ‘listening’ rather than imagining the experience for one’s own gain (1999, pp. 163–164). Boler describes the process of testimonial reading as something that ‘requires a self-reflective participation: an awareness first of myself as reader, positioned by the mediating text. Second, I recognize that reading potentially involves a task’ requiring actively challenging one’s ‘own assumptions and world views’ (1999, p. 165). Building on the theory of Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub (1992) regarding testimony and trauma Boler expands her theory of testimonial reading. Testimony acts as a challenge to the ‘legal and historical claims to truth’ as a process that evolves over time and place and ‘has no self-transparency’ (1999, pp. 165–166). The reader must also become an ‘empathetic listener’, an act where ‘acute attention to the power relations guiding her response and judgements’ while reading the text must be foregrounded (1999, p. 167). By acknowledging discomfort, irritation, anger, or rejection when reading, the reader becomes aware of her passive empathy and can navigate herself away from ‘the annihilation of the text into an object of easy consumption’ (1999, p. 168). There is also emphasis on embracing ‘strangeness’, ‘ambiguity’, and ‘vulnerability’ when reading and the acceptance of estrangement from the text while still empathising with characters through perspective taking. This is particularly important in relation to history where readers might feel like they ‘know’ a time and the plight of particular people because of reading. The complexity of how readers may come to ‘know’ a group through reading about them in a pedagogical setting is an issue I have problematised elsewhere, particularly in relation to texts that depict neurodiverse characters (Weber, 2020).

Boler argues history is strange and should feel unknowable, which makes way for her claim that, ‘at minimum testimonial reading will call on us to analyse the historical genealogy of emotional consciousness as part of the structure that forms and accounts for the other’s testimony’ (1999, p. 168). The reader must close read their own feelings and thoughts to fully empathise with the text. Empathy is still important to the reading practice because it is ‘necessary to the comprehension of trauma, and necessary to extend cognition to its limits through historical consciousness’ (1999, p. 168). Boler describes the potential operations of the meta-reading practice she advocates to include identifying the ‘history of a particular emotion’ and unpacking the social, historical, and economic contexts that influence the reader’s personal environment (1999, p. 169). For her, ‘Testimonial reading pushes us to recognize that a novel or biography reflects not merely a distant other, but analogous social relations in our own environment, in which our economic and social positions are implicated’ (1999, p. 169). Reflecting on one’s relationship to texts in this emotionally historical way methodologically offers a way forward for English pedagogy. Testimonial reading requires the teacher and the student to achieve awareness of one’s own emotional relationship to textuality. This awareness may provide an opportunity to explore the real relation between empathy and altruism.

What becomes clear through Boler’s provocations is that an unquestioned and unreflective belief in the empathic power of literature is limiting. It is limiting for the individual student, who may not have a window or a mirror to look into, and for harmful power relations to be perpetuated and established. The teacher is limited by being denied the opportunity for discussion, critical engagement, and questioning. If we accept Boler’s problematisation of the empathic value of a literary education to be an expansion of the window/mirror argument, then we have learned that the goal is to aim for limitlessness through deep self-reflection and contextual awareness. This reflective work is something teachers encourage by virtue of being present in the classroom with students and allowing the time and space for them to question and reflect their contexts and associated assumptions. However, in the following section, I explore how testimonial reading faces constrains due to the pressures of systematised education.

SysEd and the Threat to Testimonial Reading

I know what context my students are entering. At the time of writing this, Australia, and much of the Global North, is experiencing a teacher shortage. My students are being offered jobs while they are still on their practicums to fill gaps, and teachers who have been in the profession are leaving or questioning their contributions due to system pressures. The reasons for these problems are complex, too complex for me to address in full here, but one way of describing the wicked nature of our contemporary education system is to say it has been overrun by ‘SysEd’. SysEd is a term coined by Liam Semler to explain ‘the increasingly systematized nature of the education sector and professional labour within it’, which ‘is a sector-wide symptom of the market-integrated and technology-driven transformation of all professional life in the developed world’ (2017, p. 9). SysEd is a symptom of the larger impact of neoliberalism on the education sector which is focused on driving ‘ever-increasing productivity, marketisation, competitiveness, responsibilisation and acquisition of personal wealth’ (2017, p. 9). SysEd threatens the potential for testimonial reading for a few reasons: (1) testimonial reading requires time required for students to accept the invitation to witness and to reflect on their contexts; (2) testimonial reading is not standardisable, it requires deep contextual understanding for every student and learning environment in relation to each unique work of literary art; (3) testimonial reading invites critique of neoliberalism by way of witness to its failings. Testimonial reading is an act of questioning—of the context in which we are an agent, of ourselves as individuals within this context, and of the work of literature we are faced with. This process is antithetical to SysEd because of the requirement of nuance, time, and respect of the educator to manage and mediate this process.

Conclusion: Where to from Here?

I have argued that SysEd threatens education and the potential for real empathic altruism to result from reading literature in classrooms. While I believe this argument to be strong, I am hopeful for the future. I am hopeful that the teacher shortage crisis will bring change, and with change will come a rebuke of SysEd because it clearly isn’t working. I am hopeful that teachers’ voices will be heard and the testimonial reading practices they currently employ will be given time and space to flourish. I am hopeful that my students will remember our discussions and take the time in their future classrooms to investigate their own positioning of the window/mirror theory and invite their students into the act of testimonial reading. While the perceived divide between theory and practice undoubtedly prevails (just look at recent comments by politicians around the globe regarding initial teacher education), I hope that this chapter has shown the value of theory. Passive empathy, while often accidental, does not speak to the potential of literary studies. While testimonial reading may not be a foolproof approach to altruism through empathy, it offers potential, a sign that there is hope on the horizon.