I do not believe that there is such a thing as radical empathy, clearly. I believe empathy always already dooms itself to fail. That said, there are still occasions when radical empathy might be valid, namely, when a person holds power over the life and livelihood of another I am inclined to not say empathy is bad. That being said, I maintain that it is evil, even in this situation. The most prescient example of this for me remains how easily Pedagogy of the Oppressed becomes a dowsing rod for good pedagogy for so many without critically engaging all the levels of erasure that happen in this situation.

[An Aside: I have a whole other rant about men who, in their quest to be Good Feminist who empathize with women have taken up referring to students, when speaking in general as only she, and how that positions girls and women as always in the process of becoming whole and receiving knowledge]

Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Empathy

To empathize there needs to be a reference model created. While yes, education in many ways reifies existing power structures the classroom is a space of potential.

To see students as the oppressed and the role of the teacher/professor as the one to make students aware of their oppression, or to engage with students with the blindfold of oppression coloring who they are is to deny them of their innate human potential. It falls back on that missionary model inherent in this form of empathy where a person, assumed to be more complete because they hold power, needs to open themself to feel the suffering of the Other. To understand the Other through their oppression is the only way to enable meaningful interaction, work, and discussion because without it there is no connection. Based on my limited observations as someone who tends to listen more than I tend to speak I think it is fair to say that humans are naturally curious. We seek out things that pique or interest and are often drawn to tantalizing experiences. Formalized learning is one of those rare experiences that contains varying degrees of pleasure while at the same very quickly becomes a space in the service of reinforcing the status quo. When students are the oppressed and the teacher represents power and the teacher has to fix the dynamic it robs the students of their own agency and forces student into a very narrow role. “The oppressed” is the dehumanized by another name. When a person can clearly identify those who “the oppressed” are, the identifier is oppressed by the idea that the oppressed have to exist in that space. Teaching then becomes about feeling, connecting with the oppressed. Empathizing with the oppressed, the students, is a perverted form of understanding that just as easily could be captured by acknowledging that everyone in the classroom, the teacher and the students, are human.  It also ignores that even when a person has an existence that might be defined by many forms of structural oppression, they are still capable of making and having meaning, joy, happiness, curiosity, and dreams. It forecloses the joy of learning and lights the path forward in a particular way.

There is an essay in Roland Barthes’ Image, Music, Text that changed the way I understand teaching, “Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers”. In the essay the reader is shown how the classroom is like the couch of the psychoanalyst. The problem is we usually have it backwards. We assume that it is the teacher/professor analyzing the students. In reality, it is the person at the front who is speaking, sharing, shaping the space as though they are on the couch of the psychoanalyst. Those observing, the real analysts, are the students. Acknowledging that when I am in the front of the room people will learn more about me than they will about the subject opens me up to not trying to “understand” the people learning from me, or “figure out where they are coming from” so I can instill some deep knowledge or meaning into their life. Instead, I open up the space of ownership by stepping away from the seat of power so that we are in a dialogic space, me with them and more importantly them with each other.  The classroom is a space of becoming, for everyone. Teacher, student, listener, observer. We all occupy those roles. To enter the space as a place to save the oppressed, and to react to stories of teachers lack of compassion towards their students with calls of empathy is to foreclose the potential for radical ways of becoming that are only possible in the experimental space of the classroom.