In between empathy and wonder lies the contamination that makes us human

Abstract

This thesis reinspects the biological subjectivity of empathy, to reconstruct the act of empathic projection through its "auto-hetero-subjects," encountering the microbial universe via empathy as an aesthetic experience. Empathy is a term that is often taken for granted, referring to a capacity to share and understand another person's feelings or experiences. This thesis will defamiliarize that understanding, question its limits, and introduce it in the context of art and aesthetics. Contamination is invoked as a signifier that is both material--endosymbiosis; microbiome; the human virome--and affect, the moment that intrudes consciousness--empathy, wonder, or something in between. The role that the body and the gut plays in the performance of empathy with its constituent microbes is re-conceptualized by drawing from the history of aesthetics, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and microbiology. The process of fermentation acts as a muse for the body, in its abjectness and with its symbiotic affordances, to construct an empathy that is embodied within a multiplicity of bodies. This thesis speculates on the reenactment of a different kind of empathetic subject, one that is many and reflects the desire of many. Through deconstructing the concepts of empathy, wonder, and contamination in parallel with my own art practice, I will examine the role of art in producing affective relationships, and thereby generating alternative sensibilities for empathic ways of becoming with more-than-human worlds.