The Trouble with Empathy

So for the last 10 years or so, I've been noticing that my creative writing has been building my empathy muscles. Thinking from my characters' perspectives requires me to try to understand people I often don't like. For the most part, this is a good thing.

The problem is that now that I'm in the habit, I can't stop, even when I'm supposed to be maintaining some sort of professional distance from the subject matter. (No wonder I find quantitative social science difficult.)

The thing is, now I've been sensitized, I find it more and more difficult to remain untouched when I encounter difficult or dark subject matter. The problem this week is that my rhetoric of conspiracy class, despite its seemingly amusing quality (and yes, it DOES make me want to watch "So I Married an Axe Murderer" again, especially the part about the triumvirate), also has much dark subject matter. It highlights the ugly outgrowths of fear and suspicion, including much prejudice. And it doesn't help me that many of the researchers writing about often seem to thinly veil their disgust for the type of people who would feel such emotions (disgust I so easily empathize with).

Vinita Hampton Wright warned me this side effect of the creative life in The Soul Tells a Story, so I shouldn't be surprised. Still, working through my emotional responses to all of this involves a lot of emotional processing, which takes time. Sheesh, it's annoying to have to expend this sort of time during the school year dealing with this sort of thing--I expect it when I'm doing creative writing, but am always shocked, for some unaccountable reason (probably having to do with the expected academic distance), to encounter it in my academic work. The worst part is, I think, that it gives me a preview of the sort of thing I'm going to have to deal with if and when I start writing the type of novel (and I have a few in mind) that have actual villains. It's going to take courage to go there.

Some days it would be so easy to think that all of this were the result of some sort of conspiracy against me. I'm sure God's in on it, somehow--he usually has it in for any self-righteousness, anger, bitterness, etc. I try to hold on to. Hm, the Trinity--sounds triumvirate-like...maybe that empathy for the conspiracy rhetoricians won't be so hard to find after all. After all, my engagements with my faith make me realize I have all sorts of fears. It could be so easy to move into that sort of outlet for them.

So Much Material: A Rejoicing

Okay, after my lamentations of the last couple of days, it's fair that I say that I went to my first couple of classes yesterday, and they were amazing. They're going to be incredibly helpful both in my academic and my creative lives.

My "Rhetoric of Conspiracy" class--with Dr. Charles Stewart, a master in the field of rhetoric who's retiring in the spring, is going to have me thinking of interesting connections between conspiracy theories and mystery-detective narratives (which is the focus of my dissertation). And as a bonus, it's also going to have me thinking of lots of great plots for thrillers.

And then there's my interdisciplinary Archival Theory and Methods class. Beyond learning about archives and archival theory (which will be fun for me with all the library work I've got in my background), we're going to be actually helping local organizations--including the local West Lafayette library--to dig through some of their less organized collections of documents and paraphernalia and helping them with them. In the process, I should be able to:

• figure out whether an archival analysis could yield what I was hoping for my dissertation;
  
• build relationships with people who could advise me of important material that might be available, both for my dissertation and for other creative writing projects I'm working on;
• help out with something that will potentially help those that use the collections in the future;
• dig through archives of material that's bound to help me with current creative writing projects and inspire me with others.

Since some of my fiction ideas tend in the historical direction, I can see this course will be a treasure trove that will give me a better idea of how to move forward in those projects, if not actually giving me the information I need itself.

My third and final class--on historical-critical approaches to rhetorical study--is tonight. I expect that will pair well with the others, particularly with the archives class, to help me see one way I might be able to apply archival work in the comm. discipline. That will be helpful as well.

Yeah! It's going to be a good semester, bearing all sorts of interesting fruit, both foreseen and unforeseen.

Before I go, one more exciting bit of news: not that any set of rankings are that important, but it seems that Purdue's Communication dept. has been ranked as tied for #1 in the area of narrative. Since that's so central to what I'm doing here, it's nice to have an affirmation that I'm in the right place.