Reading a novel about a dying person and the people attending the dying, one can not only reflect upon the moral involvement between the literary characters depicted, but also upon the way in which the reader takes the position of a “bystander” in this scene. In two novels, The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy and The Big Ward by the Dutch author Jacoba van Velde, this moral involvement can be interpreted as a form of “compassion”. Martha Nussbaum’s concept of “compassionate imagination” offers a perspective on the way in which the reader can be involved in this literary depiction of the dying. However, the Aristotelian criteria that Nussbaum proposes for the rational judgement of compassion and her ambitions that literature can “raise society’s floor” by developing “compassionate imagination” in readers, are difficult to apply to these specific cases. In comparing both novels, it is exactly the differences between them – the historical context and social classes depicted - that bring to light a problematic presupposition in Nussbaum, namely the a-historical universality in the compassionate involvement. A re-interpretation of one of the Aristotelian criteria for compassion leaves room for a “compassionate imagination” not based on a rational judgement but on a sense of shared vulnerability that is precisely evoked by the literary depiction of the dying.
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I have been limiting my news intake since week 2 of the corona crisis, saving it up for the evening, when I read the physical papers (Het Parool and NRC) and we watch the traditional 8 o’clock national news at NPO1, a Dutch habit I must have lost some 30 years ago. Around week 3 I discovered a series of smart phone witness accounts broadcasted on Dutch public television around 10.15pm to wrap up the day, called ‘frontberichten’. Because of geo-blocking audiences outside of NL cannot watch it but there is a Facebook account where you see the short episodes (I am not on FB). They are all in Dutch (if you are inside NL, you can watch them here). The idea is simple. Those working in the ‘vital professions’ can send the mobile video clips via the usual platforms. If these professionals have been approached by a production company or whether they have indeed taken the initiative themselves remains unclear; same can be said of the selection. This is further compiled by a traditional TV format, including smooth editing, music and in-between clips here and there. Apart from these largely invisible aspects, the content is impressive.
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US new media artist Ben Grosser and I met at the 2013 Unlike Us #3 Institute of Network Cultures event in Amsterdam where he presented his Demetricator, a free web browser extension that hides all the metrics on Facebook. I have followed his work ever since. We got in contact again in 2019 when he premiered his video art clip Order of Magnitude.[1] The cut-up piece features Mark Zuckerberg’s obsession with growth. Instead of taking the traditional critical approach, Ben Grosser magnifies particular words that return in each and every one of his sentences: more, millions, billions, trillions. Covering the earliest days of Facebook in 2004 up through Zuckerberg’s compelled appearances before the US Congress in 2018, Grosser viewed every one of these recordings and used them to build a supercut drawn from three of Mark’s most favoured words: more, grow, and his every utterance of a metric such as two million or one billion. Inside the exploding galaxy of Facebook there are no limits of growth. After a few minutes the viewer gets exhausted and is ready to swipe the video away, stand up and walk out: the exact opposite response to what we experience when we’re on Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp. The emptiness of the guy suffocates. Well done, Ben.
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