INNOVATING LANGUAGE:

Effective Communication of Technology Leaders

Pre-Readings on EMPATHY

Course instructor: Brainerd Prince

Guidelines for Pre-Readings

● Kindly read this entire document before coming to class

● Take notes as you read for your understanding
● The sessions for this week will be based on these readings
● Reach out to the TAs for any doubts or clarifications

1. Bibliography:
a. Heidegger, Martin. 2001. Being and Time. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
b. Ratcliffe, Sophie. 2008. On Sympathy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
c. Edith Stein on empathy: The Collected Works of EDITH STEIN Sister Teresa
Benedicta of the Cross Discalced Carmelite 1891-1942 Volume Three ICS
Publications Washington, D.C. 1989
d. Freud, Sigmund. 1916. Wit and its relation to the unconscious. NewYork:
Moffat, Yard and Company.
e. Juffer, Jane. “Minecraft’s Affective World Building.” In Don’t Use Your Words:
Children’s Emotions in a Networked World. New York: New York University
Press, 2019.
f. Bakhtin, M.M. ‘Author and hero in aesthetic activity’. In (ed.) Holquist,
Michael. And Liapunov, Vadin. 1990, Art and Answerability: Early
Philosophical Essay by M.M. Bakhtin. Austin: University of Texas Press.
g. Bakhtin, M.M. 1993. Toward a philosophy of act. Austin: University of Texas
Press.
h. Alina Wyman (2008). Bakhtin and Scheler: Toward a Theory of Active
Understanding. The Slavonic and East European Review, 86(1), 58–89.
doi:10.2307/25479153
i. Darwall, S. (1998). Empathy, Sympathy, Care. Philosophical Studies: An
International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, 89(2/3), 261–
282. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4320822

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How Empathy is dissimilar from Sympathy?

Sympathy
Ratcliffe, Sophie. 2008. On Sympathy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Are you unable to give me your sympathy you who read this? Are you
unable to imagine this double consciousness at work within me,
flowing on like two parallel streams that never mingle their waters
and blend into a common tune?1

Midway through ‘The Lifted Veil’, George Eliot’s narrator turns on his audience. A man with
a ‘sensitive, unpractical’ nature, Latimer presents himself as suffering from a peculiar illness
(LV, 7). He is, he claims, cursed with a ‘double consciousness’ an ability to participate in the
minds of others. Paradoxically, the imposition of others’ feelings makes him feel thoroughly
isolated:

I began to be aware of a phase in my abnormal sensibility, to which, from the languid and
slight nature of my intercourse with others since my illness, I had not been alive before. This
was the obtrusion on my mind of the mental process going forward in first one person, and
then another, with whom I happened to be in contact: the vagrant, frivolous ideas and
emotions of some uninteresting acquaintance . . . would force themselves on my
consciousness like an importunate, ill played musical instrument, or the loud activity of an
imprisoned insect. (LV, 13)

For Latimer, this telepathic state manifests itself as a sort of emotional tinnitus, ‘like a
preternaturally heightened sense of hearing, making audible to one a roar of sound where
others find perfect stillness’ (LV, 18). It is characteristic of Eliot to find similitudes for feeling
by describing one sense of the world through the means of another sense. Latimer’s ear for
the perils of intimacy echoes, in its content and its phrasing, both her vision of an author
who may teach ‘by giving us his higher sensibility as a medium, a delicate acoustic . . .
instrument’ and the narrator in Middlemarch, for whom ‘a keen vision and feeling of all
human life’ would be like ‘hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat’. For them, as
for Latimer, this sensitivity is something to fear. If we possessed it, ‘we should die of that
roar that lies on the other side of silence’.

The story itself, however, was seen as out of character for Eliot. She was a writer who
repeatedly ‘articulated a project for the cultivation of the reader’s sympathetic
imagination’.3 With its terrifying vision of minds meeting, ‘The Lifted Veil’ contrasts with the
ideas expressed in Eliot’s letters the conviction that, for a writer, ‘true morality’ is the ‘active
participation in the joys and sorrows of our fellow-men . . . in a word, in the widening and
strengthening of our sympathetic nature’, or that an author’s role is to ‘call forth tolerant
judgement, pity, and sympathy’ in her readers’. (7)

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For a contemporary critic, as for Eliot, one of the main challenges when writing about the
idea of sympathy is the vagueness that surrounds the term itself. The confusion begins on
the level of definition, with the difficulties of distinguishing ‘sympathy’ from a number of
cognate terms. The first is ‘empathy’, coined from the German ‘Einfuhlung’ by Vernon Lee.
Used by Lee in 1904 to describe the experience of relating to a work of art, it has now come
to ‘designate imaginative reconstruction of another person’s experience’. For some, this
reconstruction is seen to be ‘without any particular evaluation of that experience’.

The second is the idea of ‘pity’, which was once related closely to the idea of ‘sympathy’ or
‘compassion’, but which ‘has recently come to have nuances of condescension and
superiority to the sufferer’. Meanwhile, ‘sympathy’ itself is ‘frequently used in British
eighteenth-century texts to denote an emotional equivalent’ to what some contemporary
critics would term ‘compassion’ or ‘empathy’. Such a definition is found in Johnson’s
Dictionary, which gives ‘to sympathise’ as ‘to feel with another; to feel in consequence of
what another feels; to feel mutually’ and ‘sympathy’ as ‘Fellowfeeling; mutual sensibility;
the quality of being affected by the affection of another’. (7-9)

Sympathy vs empathy
Darwall, S. (1998). Empathy, Sympathy, Care. Philosophical Studies: An International Journal
for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, 89(2/3), 261–282.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4320822

Mencius famously remarked: No man is devoid of a heart sensitive to

the suffering of others … Suppose a man were, all of a sudden, to see
a young child on the verge of falling into a well. He would certainly be
moved to compassion.

What Mencius’s translator calls compassion is an instance of what I shall call sympathetic
concern or sympathy. It is a feeling or emotion that (a) responds to some apparent threat or
obstacle to an individual’s good or well-being, (b) has that individual himself as object, and
(c) involves concern for him, and thus for his well-being, for his sake. Seeing the child on the
verge of falling, one is concerned for his safety, not just for its (his safety’s) sake, but for his
sake. One is concerned for him. Sympathy for the child is a way of caring for (and about)
him.

Sympathy differs in this respect from several distinct psychological phenomena usually
collected under the term ‘empathy’, which need not involve such concern. Common to
these are feelings that, as one psychologist puts it, are “congruent with the other’s
emotional state or condition.” Here it is the other’s standpoint that is salient, in this case,
the child’s as he faces the prospect of falling down the well. Empathy consists in feeling
what one imagines he feels, or perhaps should feel (fear, say), or in some imagined copy of

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these feelings, whether one comes thereby to be concerned for the child or not. Empathy
can be consistent with the indifference of pure observation or even the cruelty of sadism. It
all depends on why one is interested in the other’s perspective.3 Sympathy, on the other
hand, is felt as from the perspective of “one-caring.”

Empathy
Stein, Edith. 1989. Onempathy: The Collected Works of EDITH STEIN. Washington: ICS
Publications

So now to empathy itself. Here, too, we are dealing with an act which is primordial as
present experience though non-primordial in content. And this content is an experience
which, again, can be had in different ways such as in memory, expectation, or in fantasy.
When it arises before me all at once, it faces me as an object (such as the sadness I "read in
another's face"). But when I inquire into its implied tendencies (try to bring another's mood
to clear given ness to myself), the content, having pulled me into it, is no longer really an
object. I am now no longer turned to the content but to the object of it, am at the subject of
the content in the original subject's place. And only after successfully executed clarification,
does the content again face me as an object.

Thus in all the cases of the representation of experiences considered, there are three levels
or modalities of accomplishment even if in a concrete case people do not always go through
all levels but are often satisfied with one of the lower ones. These are (1) the emergence of
the experience, (2) the fulfilling explication, and (3) the comprehensive objectification of the
explained experience. On the first and third levels, the representation exhibits the non-
primordial parallel to perception, and on the second level it exhibits the non-primordial
parallel to the having of the experience. The subject of the empathised experience,
however, is not the subject empathising, but another. And this is what is fundamentally new
in contrast with the memory, expectation, or the fantasy of our own experiences. These two
subjects are separate and not joined together, as previously, by a consciousness of
sameness or a continuity of experience. (10)

And while I am living in the other's joy, I do not feel primordial joy. It does not issue live
from my "I." Neither does it have the character of once having lived like remembered joy.
But still much less is it merely fantasised without actual life. This other subject is primordial
although I do not experience it as primordial. In my non-primordial experience I feel, as it
were, led by a primordial one not experienced by me but still there, manifesting itself in my
non primordial experience.

Thus empathy is a kind of act of perceiving [eine Art erfahrender Akte] sui generis. We have
set ourselves the task of expounding it in its peculiarity before tackling any other question
(of whether such experience is valid or how it occurs). And we have conducted this

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investigation in purest generality. Empathy, which we examined and sought to describe, is
the experience of foreign consciousness in general, irrespective of the kind of the
experiencing subject or of the subject whose consciousness is experienced. We only
discussed the pure "I," the subject of experience, on the subject's as well as on the object's
side. Nothing else was drawn into the investigation.

The experience which an "I" as such has of another "I" as such < 11 > looks like this. This is
how human beings comprehend the psychic life of their fellows. Also as believers they
comprehend the love, the anger, and the precepts of their God in this way; and God can
comprehend people's lives in no other way. As the possessor of complete knowledge, God is
not mistaken about people's experiences, as people are mistaken about each others'
experiences. But people's experiences do not become God's own, either; nor do they have
the same kind of givenness for Him. (11)

Lipps depicts empathy as an "inner participation" in foreign experiences. Doubtless, this is

equivalent to our highest level of the consummation of empathy-where we are "at" the
foreign subject and turned with it to its object. He stresses the objectivity or the
"demanding" character of empathy and thus expresses what we mean by designating it as a
kind of act undergone. Further, he indicates how empathy is akin to memory and
expectation. But this brings us directly to a point where our ways part. (12)

Lipps speaks of the fact that every experience about which I know, including those
remembered and expected as well as those empathised, "tends" to be fully experienced.
And it is fully experienced if nothing in me opposes it. At the same time the "I," an object
until now, is experienced. This is so whether the "I" is past or future, my own or the foreign
"I." He also calls this full experiencing of foreign experience empathy. Indeed, he first sees
full empathy here, the other being an incomplete, preliminary level of empathy.

That the subject of the remembered, expected, or empathised experience in this second
form of memory, expectation, or empathy is not properly an object is in agreement with our
conception. But we do not agree that there is a complete coincidence with the
remembered, expected, or empathised "I," that they become one. Lipps confuses the
following two acts: (1) being drawn into the experience at first given objectively and fulfilling
its implied tendencies with (2) the transition from non-primordial to primordial experience.
(13)

Empathetic Relation
Freud, Sigmund. 1916. Wit and its relation to the unconscious. NewYork: Moffat, Yard and
Company.

As a sample of this class we may choose comic nonsense, as it is produced by ignorant

candidates in an examination; it is no doubt more difficult to give a simple example of

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character traits. We should not be confused if we find that nonsense and stupidity, which so
often produce a comic effect, are nevertheless not felt as comic in every case, just as the
same characters which on one occasion can be laughed at as comic may on another
occasion strike one as contemptible or hateful. This fact, of which we must not lose sight,
merely points out that other factors are concerned in producing the comic effect besides the
comparison we know about - factors which we may be able to trace out in another
connection. (150)

The comic that is found in someone else’s intellectual and mental characteristics is evidently
once again the outcome of a comparison between him and my own self, though, curiously
enough, a comparison which has as a rule produced the opposite result to that in the case of
a comic movement or action. In this latter case it was comic if the other person had made a
greater expenditure than I thought I should need. In the case of a mental function, on the
contrary, it becomes comic if the other person has spared himself expenditure which I regard
as indispensable (for nonsense and stupidity are inefficiencies of function). In the former
case I laugh because he has taken too much trouble, in the latter because he has taken too
little. The comic effect apparently depends, therefore, on the difference between the two
cathectic expenditures - one’s own and the other person’s as estimated by ‘empathy’ - and
not on which of the two the difference favours. But this peculiarity, which at first sight
confuses our judgement, vanishes when we bear in mind that a restriction of our muscular
work and an increase of our intellectual work fit in with the course of our personal
development towards a higher level of civilization. By raising our intellectual expenditure we
can achieve the same result with a diminished expenditure on our movements. Evidence of
this cultural success is provided by our machines. (151)

Thus a uniform explanation is provided of the fact that a person appears comic to us if, in
comparison with ourselves, he makes too great an expenditure on his bodily functions and
too little on his mental ones; and it cannot be denied that in both these cases our laughter
expresses a pleasurable sense of the superiority which we feel in relation to him. If the
relation in the two cases is reversed - if the other person’s physical expenditure is found to
be less than ours or his mental expenditure greater - then we no longer laugh, we are filled
with astonishment and admiration.

The origin of comic pleasure which has been discussed here - its derivation from a
comparison of another person with our self, from the difference between our own psychical
expenditure and the other person’s as estimated by empathy - is probably the most
important genetically. It is certain, however, that it has not remained the only one. We have
learnt at one time or other to disregard this comparison between the other person and
ourself and to derive the pleasurable difference from the one side only, whether from the
empathy or from the processes in ourself - which proves that the feeling of superiority bears
no essential relation to comic pleasure. A comparison is indispensable for the generation of
this pleasure. We find that it is made between two cathectic expenditures that occur in rapid
succession and are concerned with the same function, and these expenditures are either
brought about in us through empathy into someone else or, without any such relation, are
discovered in our own mental processes.

The first of these cases - in which, therefore, the other person still plays a part, though no
longer in comparison with our own self - arises when the pleasurable difference in cathectic

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expenditures is brought about by external influences, which we may sum up as a ‘situation’.
For that reason, this species of the comic is also known as ‘the comic of situation’. The
characteristics of the person who provides the comic effect do not in this case play an
essential part: we laugh even if we have to confess that we should have had to do the same
in that situation. We are here extracting the comic from the relation of human beings to the
often over-powerful external world; and so far as the mental processes of a human being are
concerned, this external world also comprises social conventions and necessities and even
his own bodily needs. A typical instance of the latter kind is provided if, in the middle of an
activity which makes demands on a person’s mental powers, he is suddenly interrupted by a
pain or an excretory need. The contrast which, through empathy, offers us the comic
difference is that between the high degree of interest taken by him before the interruption
and the minimal one that he has left over for his mental activity when the interruption has
occurred. The person who offers us this difference becomes comic to us once again for his
inferiority; but he is inferior only in comparison with his earlier self and not in comparison with
us, for we know that in the same circumstances we could not have behaved otherwise. But it
is noteworthy that we only find someone’s being put in a position of inferiority, where there is
empathy - that is, where someone else is concerned: if we ourselves were in similar straits
we should be conscious only of distressing feelings. It is probably only by keeping such
feelings away from ourselves that we are able to enjoy pleasure from the difference arising
out of a comparison between these changing cathexes.

The other source of the comic, which we find in the transformations of our own cathexes, lies
in our relations with the future, which we are accustomed to anticipate with our expectant
ideas. I assume that a quantitatively definite expenditure underlies each of our ideas - an
expenditure which, in the event of a disappointment, is therefore diminished by a definite
difference. Here I may once again recall the remarks I made earlier on ‘ideational mimetics’.
But it seems to me to be easier to prove a real mobilisation of cathectic energy in the case of
expectation. It is quite obviously true of a number of cases that motor preparations are what
form the expression of expectation - above all in all cases in which the expected event
makes demands on my motility - and that these preparations can be at once determined
quantitatively. If I am expecting to catch a ball which is being thrown to me, I put my body
into tensions which will enable it to meet the impact of the ball; and, should the ball when it is
caught turn out to be too light, my superfluous movements make me comic to the spectators.
I have let myself be enticed by my expectation into an exaggerated expenditure of
movement. The same is true if, for instance, I lift a fruit which I have judged to be heavy out
of a basket, but which, to my disappointment, turns out to be a sham one, hollow and made
of wax. My hand, by jumping up, betrays the fact that I had prepared an innervation too large
for the purpose - and I am laughed at for it. There is at least one case in which the
expenditure on expectation can be directly demonstrated measurably by physiological
experiments on animals. In Pavlov’s experiments on salivary secretions, various kinds of
food are set before dogs in whom a salivary fistula has been opened; the amounts of saliva
secreted then vary according to whether the experimental conditions confirm or disappoint
the dogs’ expectations of being fed with the food set before them. (311-315)

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Being with and solicitude

Heidegger, Martin. 2001. Being and Time. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd

Being-with is an existential characteristic of Dasein even when factically no Other is present-

at-hand or perceived. Even Dasein's Being-alone is Being-with in the world. The Other can
be missing only in and for a Being-with. Being-alone is a deficient mode of Being-with; its
very possibility is the proof of this. On the other hand, factical Being-alone is not obviated by
the occurrence of a second example of a human being 'beside' me, or by ten such
examples. Even if these and more are present-at-hand, Dasein can still be alone. So Being-
with and the facticity of Being with one another are not based on the occurrence together of
several 'subjects'.

Yet Being - alone 'among' many does not mean that with regard to their Being they are
merely present-at-hand there alongside us. Even in our Being 'among them' they are there
with us; their Dasein-with is encountered in a mode in which they are indifferent and alien.
Being missing and 'Being away' [Das Fehlen und "Fortsein"] are modes of Dasein-with, and
are possible only because Dasein as Being-with lets the Dasein of Others be encountered in
its world. Being-with is in every case a characteristic of one's own Dasein; Dasein-with
characterises the Dasein of Others to the extent that it is freed by its world for a Being-with.
Only so far as one's own Dasein has the essential structure of Being-with, is it Dasein-with
as encounterable for Others.

If Dasein-with remains existentially constitutive for Being-in-the world, then, like our
circumspective dealings with the ready-to-hand within-the-world (which, by way of
anticipation, we have called 'concern'), it must be Interpreted in terms of the phenomenon of
care; for as "care" the Being of Dasein in general is to be defined. (Compare Chapter 6 of
this Division.) Concern is a character-of-Being which Being-with cannot have as its own,
even though Being-with, like concern, is a Being towards entities encountered within-the-
world. But those entities towards which Dasein as Being-with comports itself do not have the
kind of Being which belongs to equipment ready-to-hand ; they are themselves Dasein.
These entities are not objects of concern, but rather of solicitude. (157)

Even 'concern' with food and clothing, and the nursing of the sick body, are forms of
solicitude. But we understand the expression "solicitude" in a way which corresponds to our
use of "concern". as a term for an existentiae. For example, 'welfare work' ["Fiirsorge"], as a
factical social arrangement, is grounded in Dasein's state of Being as Being-with. Its factical
urgency gets its motivation in that Dasein maintains itself proximally and for the most part in
the deficient modes of solicitude. Being for, against, or without one another, passing one
another by, not "mattering" to one another-these are possible ways of solicitude. And it is
precisely these last-named deficient and Indifferent modes that characterize everyday,
average Being-with-one-another. These modes of Being show again the characteristics of
inconspicuousness and obviousness which belong just as much to the everyday Dasein-with
of Others within-theworld as to the readiness-to-hand of the equipment with which one is
daily concerned. These Indifferent modes of Being-with-one-another may easily mislead
ontological Interpretation into interpreting this kind of Being, in the first instance, as the mere
Being-present-at-hand of several subjects. It seems as if only negligible variations of the

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same kind of Being lie before us; yet ontologically there is an essential distinction between
the 'indifferent' way in which Things at random occur together and the way in which entities
who are with one another do not "matter" to one another.

With regard to its positive modes, solicitude has two extreme possibilities. It can, as it were,
take away 'care' from the Other and put itself in his position of concern : it can leap in for
him. This kind of solicitude takes over for the Other that with which he is to concern himself.
The Other is thus thrown out of his own position; he steps back so that afterwards, when the
matter has been attended to, he can either take it over as something finished and at his
disposal, 2 or disburden himself of it completely. In such solicitude the Other can become
one who is dominated and dependent, even if this domination is a tacit one and remains
hidden from him. This kind of solicitude, which leaps in and takes away 'care', is to a large
extent determinative for Being with one another, and pertains for the most part to our
concern with the ready-to-hand. (158)

In contrast to this, there is also the possibility of a kind of solicitude which does not so much
leap in for the Other as leap ahead of him [ihm vorausspringt] in his existentiell potentiality-
for-Being, not in order to take away his 'care' but rather to give it back to him authentically as
such for the first time. This kind of solicitude pertains essentially to authentic care -that is, to
the existence of the Other, not to a "what" with which he is concerned; it helps the Other to
become transparent to himself in his care and to become free for it.

Solicitude proves to be a state of Dasein's Being--one which, in accordance with its different
possibilities, is bound up with its Being towards the world of its concern, and likewise with its
authentic Being towards itself. Being with one another is based proximally and often
exclusively upon what is a matter of common concern in such Being. A Being-with-one-
another which arises [entspringt] from one's doing the same thing as someone else, not only
keeps for the most part within the outer limits, but enters the mode of distance and reserve.
The Beingwith-one-another of those who are hired for the same affair often thrives only on
mistrust. On the other hand, when they devote themselves to the same affair in common,
their doing so is determined by the manner in which their Dasein, each in its own way, has
been taken hold of.l They thus become authentically bound together, and this makes
possible the right kind of objectivity [die rechte Sachlichkeit], which frees the Other in his
freedom for himself.

Everyday Being-with-one-another maintains itself between the two extremes of positive

solicitude-that which leaps in and dominates, and that which leaps forth and liberates
[vorspringend-befreienden]. It brings numerous mixed forms to maturity; to describe these
and classify them would take us beyond the limits of this investigation. Just as
circumspection belongs to concern as a way of discovering what is ready-to-hand, solicitude
is guided by considerateness and forbearance. Like solicitude, these can range through their
respective deficient and Indifferent modes up to the point of inconsiderateness or the
perfunctoriness for which indifference leads the way.

The world not only frees the ready-to-hand as entities encountered within-the-world ; it also
frees Dasein, and the Others in their Dasein With. But Dasein's ownmost meaning of Being
is such that this entity (which has been freed environmentally) is Being-in in the same world
in which, as encounterable for Others, it is there with them. We have interpreted worldhood

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as that referential totality which constitutes significance. In Being-familiar with this
significance and previously understanding it, Dasein lets what is ready-to-hand be
encountered as discovered in its involvement. InDasein'sBeing, the context of references or
assignments which significance implies is tied up with Dasein's ownmost Being-a Being
which essentially can have no involvement, but which is rather that Being for the sake of
which Dasein itself is as it is.

According to the analysis which we have now completed, Being with Others belongs to the
Being of Dasein, which is an issue for Dasein in its very Being. Thus as Being-with, Dasein
'is' essentially for the sake of Others. This must be understood as an existential statement as
to its essence. Even if the particular factical Dasein does not turn to Others, and supposes
that it has no need of them or manages to get along without them, it is in the way of Being-
with. In Being-with, as the existential "for-the-sake-of" of Others, these have already been
disclosed in their Dasein. With their Being-with, their disclosedness has been constituted
beforehand ; accordingly, this disclosedness also goes to make up significance, that is to
say, worldhood. And, significance, as worldhood, is tied up with the existential "for-the-sake-
of-which". 2 Since the world hood of that world in which every Dasein essentially is already,
is thus constituted, it accordingly lets us encounter what is environmentally ready-to-hand as
something with which we are circumspectively concerned, and it does so in such a way that
together with it we encounter the Dasein-with of Others. The structure of the world's
worldhood is such that Others are not proximally present-at-hand as free-floating subjects
along with other Things, but show themselves in the world in their special environmental
Being, and do so in terms of what is ready-to-hand in that world.

Being-with is such that the disclosedness of the Dasein-with of Others belongs to it; this
means that because Dasein's Being is Being-with, its understanding of Being already implies
the understanding of Others. This understanding, like any understanding, is not an
acquaintance derived from knowledge about them, but a primordially existential kind of
Being, which, more than anything else, makes such knowledge and acquaintance possible.
Knowing oneself [Sichkennen] is grounded in Being-with, which understands primordially. It
operates proximally in accordance with the kind of Being which is closest to us-Being-in-the
world as Being-with ; and it does so by an acquaintance with that which Dasein, along with
the Others, comes across in its environmental circumspection and concerns itself with-an
acquaintance in which Dasein understands. Solicitous concern is understood in terms of
what we are concerned with, and along with our understanding of it. Thus in concernful
solicitude the Other is proximally disclosed.

But because solicitude dwells proximally and for the most part in the deficient or at least the
Indifferent modes (in the indifference of passing one another by), the kind of knowing-oneself
which is essential and closest, demands that one become acquainted with oneself. And
when, indeed, one's knowing-oneself gets lost in such ways as aloofness, hiding oneself
away, or putting on a disguise, Being-with-one-another must follow special routes of its own
in order to come close to Others, or even to 'see through them' ["hinter sie" zu kommen].

But just as opening oneself up [Sichoffenbaren] or closing oneself off is grounded in one's
having Being-with-one-another as one's kind of Being at the time, and indeed is nothing else
but this, even the explicit disclosure of the Other in solicitude grows only out of one's
primarily Being with him in each case. Such a disclosure of the Other (which is indeed

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thematic, but not in the manner of theoretical psychology) easily becomes the phenomenon
which proximally comes to view when one considers the theoretical problematic of
understanding the 'psychical life of Others' ["fremden Seelenlebens"]. In this phenomenally
'proximal' manner it thus presents a way of Being with one another understandingly; but at
the same time it gets taken as that which, primordially and 'in the beginning', constitutes
Being towards Others and makes it possible at all. (161)

This phenomenon, which is none too happily designated as 'empathy' ["Einfuhlung"], is then
supposed, as it were, to provide the first ontological bridge from one's own subject, which is
given proximally as alone, to the other subject, which is proximally quite closed off. Of
course Being towards Others is ontologically different from Being towards Things which are
present-at-hand. The entity which is 'other' has itself the same kind of Being as Dasein. In
Being with and towards Others, there is thus a relationship of Being [Seinsverhaltnis) from
Dasein to Dasein. But it might be said that this relationship is already constitutive for one's
own Dasein, which, in its own right, has an understanding of Being, and which thus relates
itselfl towards Dasein. The relationship-of-Being which one has towards Others would then
become a Projection of one's own Being-towards-oneself 'into something else'. The Other
would be a duplicate of the Self.

But while these deliberations seem obvious enough, it is easy to see that they have little
ground to stand on. The presupposition which this argument demands-that Dasein's Being
towards an Other is its Being towards itself-fails to hold. As long as the legitimacy of this
presupposition has not turned out to be evident, one may still be puzzled as to how Dasein's
relationship to itself is thus to be disclosed to the Other as Other. Not only is Being towards
Others an autonomous, irreducible relationship of Being: this relationship, as Being-with, is
one which, with Dasein's Being, already is. 3 Of course it is indisputable that a lively mutual
acquaintanceship on the basis of Being-with, often depends upon how far one's own Dasein
has understood itself at the time ; but this means that it depends only upon how far one's
essential Being with Others has made itself transparent and has not disguised itself. 4 And
that is possible only if Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, already is with Others. 'Empathy' does
not first constitute Being-with; only on the basis of Being-with does 'empathy' become
possible : it gets its motivation from the unsociability of the dominant modes of Being-with.
(162)

But the fact that 'empathy' is not a primordial existential phenomenon, any more than is
knowing in general, does not mean that there is nothing problematical about it. The special
hermeneutic of empathy will have to show how Being-with-one-another and Dasein's
knowing of itself are led astray and obstructed by the various possibilities of Being which
Dasein itself possesses, so that a genuine 'understanding' gets suppressed, and Dasein
takes refuge in substitutes ; the possibility of understanding the stranger correctly
presupposes such a hermeneutic as its positive existential condition.1 Our analysis has
shown that Being-with is an existential constituent of Being-in-the-world. Dasein-with has
proved to be a kind of Being which entities encountered within-the-world have as their own.
So far as Dasein is at all, it has Being-with-one-another as its kind of Being. This cannot be
conceived as a summative result of the occurrence of several 'subjects'. Even to come
across a number of 'subjects' [ einer Anzahl von "Subjekten"] becomes possible only if the
Others who are concerned proximally in their Dasein-with are treated merely as 'numerals'
["Nummer"]. Such a number of subjects' gets discovered only by a definite Being-with-and-

11
towards-one-another. This 'inconsiderate' Being-with 'reckons' ["rechnet"] with the Others
without seriously 'counting on them' ["auf sie zahlt"], or without even wanting to 'have
anything to do' with them.

One's own Dasein, like the Dasein-with of Others, is encountered proximally and for the
most part in terms of the with-world with which we are environmentally concerned. When
Dasein is absorbed in the world of its concern-that is, at the same time, in its Being-with
towards Others -it is not itself. Who is it, then, who has taken over Being as everyday Being-
with-one-another ? (163)

Suffering
William E. Connolly (1996). ‘Suffering, justice, and the politics of becoming’. 20(3), 251–277.
doi:10.1007/bf00113819

People suffer. We suffer from illness, disease, unemployment, dead-end jobs, bad
marriages, the loss of loved ones, social relocation, tyranny, police brutality, street violence,
existential anxiety, guilt, envy, resentment, depression, stigmatization, rapid social change,
sexual harassment, child abuse, poverty, medical malpractice, alienation, political defeat,
toothaches, the loss of self-esteem, identity-panic, torture, and fuzzy categories. We
organise suffering into categories to help cope with it, but often these categories
themselves conceal some forms of suffering, even contribute to them. This latter experience
leads some to suspect that suffering is never entirely reducible to any determinate set of
categories.

To suffer is to bear, endure or undergo, to submit to something injurious, to become dis-

organised. Suffering subsists on the underside of agency, mastery, wholeness, joy, and
comfort. It is, therefore, ubiquitous.

Live Entering
Alina Wyman (2008). Bakhtin and Scheler: Toward a Theory of Active Understanding. The
Slavonic and East European Review, 86(1), 58–89. doi:10.2307/25479153

“Bakhtin also contemplates the ethical and aesthetic imp of entering other psyches in a responsible
way, developing a 'mechanics' of the empathetic process. In 'Toward a Philosophy Act' and
'Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity', Bakhtin proposes a three-step programme of vyzhivanie,
literally, 'living into' another’s consciousness (also translated as 'live-entering'), a mental operation
that aims to avoid the dangers of complete absorption of one consciousness by another. Vzhivanie
consists of: (1) the moment of mental projection (pure empathising); (2) a return into oneself with
the newly knowledge of the other's inner world; and (3) the 'consummation’ of the other
{zavershenie), which consists in the creative use of both the external and the internal points of view
on the subject of active empathy. This 'programme' should not be viewed as a chronological

12
sequence of separate stages, Bakhtin warns. Rather it should be interpreted dynamically, as a series
of synchronic, often virtually inseparable 'moments' of one continuous emotional process.
Bakhtin structures his concept of live-entering in such a way that 'pure empathising', the moment
of temporarily coinciding with the other, becomes merely one of the components in the complex
process of understanding. Having returned into himself and resumed his individual position in
being, the subject concerns himself with 'shaping and objectifying the blind matter obtained
through empathising'. 'Referring what I myself have experienced to the other is an obligatory
condition for a productive projection into the other and cognition of the other, both ethically and
aesthetically,' Bakhtin observes. 'Aesthetic activity proper actually begins at the point when we
return into ourselves, when we return to our own place outside the suffering person, and start to
form and consummate the material we derived from projecting ourselves into the other and
experiencing him from within himself ('Author and Hero', p. 26, emphasis in text). The 'shaping'
and 'objectifying' of the other's emotional content is accomplished through my intentional and
consistent utilisation of the 'surplus of vision', a visual advantage I possess in relation to the other
by virtue of my external position in the process of empathising. While on the level of personal
relationships, I have an 'excess' of information in respect to the less privileged other, on the
aesthetic level, the author 'sees and knows something that is in principle inaccessible to [the hero]'
('Author and Hero', p. 12). The fruitful interaction between the two 'surpluses' or points of view,
my original external stance and the internal perspective obtained during my 'projection' into his
inner world, results in the act of consummation, my loving completion of the other's inwardly
incoherent and fragmented spiritual image. After penetrating into the other's inner world, I resume
my position outside him, emerging with invaluable insights about his inner being, which will
become 'externalised' in my return movement, shaped into a tangible, but not reified, image of the
other's inner world, so that it can be 'viewed' on the same plane as his plastically expressive exterior.
I may now en-frame it by my own field of vision, creating a 'consummating environment for him
out of this excess of my own seeing, knowing, desiring and feeling' ('Author and By consummating
another self, I impose shape-giving internally chaotic, infinite stream of the other's expe into being
those unrealized, dormant values that have o reality from within the other's consciousness and thus
saving the fate of empty potentiality. From my value-reveal affirm the other's absolute worth, so
that he, too, become assured of his palpable identity with that cheris that I embrace so completely.
By witnessing my consumm he may become aware of his own beneficent reality as o to me and
may use this newly gained awareness as a stable platform for further spiritual growth” (74-76)

Bakhtin, M.M. 1993. Toward a philosophy of act. Austin: University of Texas Press.

An essential moment (though not the only one) in aesthetic contemplation is empathising
into an individual object of seeing – seeing it from inside in its own essence. This moment of
empathising is always followed by the moment of objectification, that is, a placing outside
oneself of the individuality understood through empathising, a separating of it from oneself,

13
a return into oneself. And only this returned-into-itself consciousness gives form, from its
own place, to the individuality grasped from inside, that is, shapes it aesthetically as a
unitary, whole, and qualitatively distinctive individuality. And all these aesthetic moments-
unity, wholeness, self-sufficiency, distinctiveness-are transgredient to the individuality that
is being determined: from within itself, these moments do not exist for it in its own life, it
does not live by them-for itself. They have meaning and are actualized by the empathizer,
who is situated outside the bounds of that individuality, by way of shaping and objectifying
the blind matter obtained through empathising. In other words, the aesthetic reflexion of
living life is, in its very principle, not the self reflexion of life in motion, of life in its actual
aliveness: it presupposes another subiectum, a subiectum of empathising, a subiectum
situated outside the bounds of that life. One should not think, of course, that the moment
of pure empathising is chronologically followed by the moment of objectifying, the moment
of forming. Both of these moments are inseparable in reality. Pure empathising is an
abstract moment of the unitary act of aesthetic activity, and it should not be thought of as a
temporal period; the moments of empathising and of objectifying interpenetrate each
other.

I empathise actively into an individuality and, consequently, I do not lose myself completely,
nor my unique place outside it, even for a moment. It is not the object that unexpectedly
takes possession of me as the passive one. It is I who empathise actively into the object:
empathising is my act, and only that constitutes its productiveness and newness
(Schopenhauer and music). Empathising actualizes something that did not exist either in the
object of empathising or in myself prior to the act of empathising, and through this
actualized something Being-as-event is enriched (that is, it does not remain equal to itself).
And this act/deed that brings forth something new can no longer be a reflecting that is
aesthetic in its essence, for that would turn it into something located outside the action-
performer and his answerability. Pure empathising, that is, the act of coinciding with
another and losing one's own unique place in once-occurrent Being, presupposes the
acknowledgment that my own uniqueness and the uniqueness of my place constitute an
inessential moment that has no influence on the character of the essence of the world's
being. But this acknowledgment of one's own uniqueness as inessential for the conception
of Being has the inevitable consequence that one also loses the uniqueness of Being, and, as
a result, we end up with a conception of Being only as possible Being, and not essential,
actual, once-occurrent, inescapably real Being. This possible Being however, is incapable of
becoming, incapable of living. The meaning of a Being for which my unique place in Being
has been acknowledged as inessential will never be able to bestow sense on me, nor is this
really the meaning of Being-as-event. (11-12)

But pure empathising as such is impossible. If I actually lost myself in the other (instead of
two participants there would be one-an impoverishment of Being), i.e., if I ceased to be
unique, then this moment of my not-being could never become a moment of my
consciousness; non-being cannot become a moment in the being of consciousness-it would

14
simply not exist for me, i.e., being would not be accomplished through me at that moment.
Passive empathising, being-possessed, losing oneself-these have nothing in common with
the answerable act/deed of self-abstracting or self-renunciation. In self-renunciation I
actualize with utmost activeness and in full the uniqueness of my place in Being. The world
in which I, from my own unique place, renounce myself does not become a world in which I
do not exist, a world which is indifferent, in its meaning, to my existence: self-renunciation
is a performance or accomplishment that encompasses Being-as-event. A great symbol of
self-activity, the descending[?] of Christ [32 illegible words]. The world from which Christ
has departed will no longer be the world in which he had never existed; it is, in its very
principle, a different world.

This world, the world in which the event of Christ's life and death was accomplished, both in
the fact and in the meaning of his life and death-this world is fundamentally and essentially
indeterminable . . either in theoretical categories or in categories of historical cognition or
through aesthetic intuition. In the first case we cognize the abstract sense, but lose the
once-occurrent fact of the actual historical accomplishment of the event; in the second case
we grasp the historical fact, but lose the sense; in the third case we have both the being of
the fact and the sense in it as the moment of its individuation, but we lose our own position
in relation to it, our ought-to-be participation in it. That is, nowhere do we have the
accomplishment in its fullness-in the unity and interpenetration of both the onceoccurrent
fact-accomplishment-sense-significance and our participation in it (for the world of this
accomplishment is unitary and unique). (13)

Bakhtin, M.M. ‘Author and hero in aesthetic activity’. In (ed.) Holquist, Michael. And
Liapunov, Vadin. 1990, Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essay by M.M. Bakhtin.
Austin: University of Texas Press.

Let us say that there is a human being before me who is suffering. The horizon of his
consciousness is filled by the circumstance which makes him suffer and by the objects which
he sees before him. The emotional and volitional tones which pervade this visible world of
objects are tones of suffering. What I have to do is to experience and consummate him
aesthetically (ethical actions, such as assistance, rescue, consolation, are excluded in this
case). The first step in aesthetic activity is my projecting myself into him and experiencing
his life from within him must experience—come to see and to know—what he experiences; I
must put myself in his place and coincide with him, as it were. (How this projection of myself
into him is possible and in what form— the psychological problem of such projection—we
shall not consider here. It is enough for our purposes that such projection, within certain
limits, is possible in fact.) I must appropriate to myself the concrete life-horizon of this
human being as he experiences it himself; a whole series of features accessible to me from
my own place will turn out to be absent from within this other's horizon. Thus, the person
suffering does not experience the fullness of his own outward expressedness in being; he
experiences this expressedness only partially, and then in the language of his inner

15
sensations of himself. He does not see the agonising tension of his own muscles, does not
see the entire, plastically consummated posture of his own body, or the expression of
suffering on his own face. He does not see the clear blue sky against the background of
which his suffering outward image is delineated for me. And even if he were able to see all
these features—if, for example, he were in front of a mirror—he would lack the appropriate
emotional and volitional approach to these features. That is, they would not occupy the
same place in his own awareness that they do in his contemplator's. During the time I
project myself into him, I must detach myself from the independent significance of all these
features that are transgredient to his consciousness, and I must utilise them merely as a
directive, as a means for projecting myself into him. In other words, the outward
expressedness of such features is the path by which I penetrate him and almost merge or
become one with him from within. But is this fullness of inner merging the ultimate goal of
aesthetic activity, for which outward expressedness is only a means and performs only an
informative function? Certainly not. Aesthetic activity proper has not even begun yet. (26)

The life situation of a suffering human being that is really experienced from within may
prompt me to perform an ethical action, such as providing assistance, consolation, or
cognitive reflection. But in any event my projection of myself into him must be followed by a
return into myself, a return to my own place outside the suffering person, for only from this
place can the material derived from my projecting myself into the other be rendered
meaningful ethically, cognitively, or aesthetically. If this return into myself did not actually
take place, the pathological phenomenon of experiencing another's suffering as one's own
would result—an infection with another's suffering, and nothing more.

Strictly speaking, a pure projection of myself into the other, a move involving the loss of my
own unique place outside the other, is, on the whole, hardly possible,- in any event, it is
quite fruitless and senseless. When I project myself into another's suffering, I experience it
precisely as his suffering—in the category of the other, and my reaction to it is not a cry of
pain, but a word of consolation or an act of assistance. Referring what I myself have
experienced to the other is an obligatory condition for a productive projection into the
other and cognition of the other, both ethically and aesthetically. Aesthetic activity proper
actually begins at the point when we return into ourselves, when we return to our own
place outside the suffering person, and start to form and consummate the material we
derived from projecting ourselves into the other and experiencing him from within himself.
And these acts of forming and consummating are effected by our completing that material
(that is, the suffering of the given human being) with features transgredient to the entire
object-world of the other's suffering consciousness. These transgredient features no longer
have the function of informing but have a new function, the function of consummating. The
position of his body which had first informed us about his suffering and which led us to his
inward suffering now takes on a purely plastic value, becomes an expression which
embodies and consummates the suffering expressed, and the emotional and volitional
tones of this expressedness are no longer the tones of suffering. The clear blue sky that

16
enframes him becomes a pictorial feature which consummates and resolves his suffering.
And all these values that consummated the image of the other were drawn by me from the
excess of my seeing, volition, and feeling.

It should be kept in mind that the constitutive moments of projecting oneself into the other
and of consummating the other do not follow one another chronologically; we must
emphasise that the sense of each is different, although in living experience projection and
consummation are intimately intertwined and fuse with one another. In a verbal work,
every word keeps both moments in view: every word performs a twofold function insofar as
it directs my projection of myself into the other as well as brings him to completion, except
that one constitutive moment may prevail over the other. Our most immediate task is to
examine those plastic-pictorial, spatial values which are transgredient to the hero's
consciousness and his world, transgredient to his cognitive-ethical stance in the world, and
which consummate him from outside, from another's consciousness of him—the
consciousness of the author/ contemplator. (27)

Moving (in to) Outwards

Juffer, Jane. “Minecraft’s Affective World Building.” In Don’t Use Your Words: Children’s
Emotions in a Networked World. New York: New York University Press, 2019.

The Minecraft world building illustrates Raymond Williams’s notion of “structures of

feeling,” which, to recall, describes how feelings acquire a certain conceptual force, and vice
versa—“not feeling against thought, but thought as felt and feeling as thought” (132). As I
argued in the introduction, structures of feeling are shaped by and reshape both time and
place: a cultural production can define a temporary home as an affective, embodied, felt
place. This happens even when the home is a virtual home and the child’s embodiment
takes place through an online avatar. Minecraft is an especially relevant example of world
building insofar as it invites players to design and build their own homes and go out mining,
hunting, and fighting in order to protect their homes and themselves. This simultaneous
appeal to both the domestic and the public may be one reason the game appeals to both
boys and girls in equal numbers. Through multiplayer gaming and online forums, players
extend this virtual space to include friends and other players, enhancing agency as they
collaborate in the construction of non-adult spaces. This is not a static place but rather a
moving, constantly redefined space in which kids can evade parental regulation. They must
still adhere to parental rules about screen time and content, but because many parents will
not understand the gaming world, kids can subvert the rules to varying degrees, depending
on the home situation. The language with which they negotiate the Minecraft world— full of
expressions and exclamations that do not adhere to “proper” speech —helps construct
these alternative spaces.

17
While there is a large archive of Minecraft worlds—both saved on a child’s iPad or computer
and in the form of YouTube videos—every Minecraft world is a fluctuating one. There is no
singular emotion given primacy but rather varying experiences of intensity as one roams
through the various terrains. It is, in many ways, a Deleuzian world, and I will be drawing on
some of the philosopher’s ideas to show how Minecraft presents an alternative to the
naming of emotions that I have questioned in earlier chapters. This is not a game about
finding one’s identity—i.e., defining an avatar that fits who you are before you begin and
seeing him or her through to the completion of the game. Rather, Minecraft embodies the
Deleuzian notion of “becoming,” in which subjectivity forms with movement through a
space and is ongoing. This process is both psychic and physical: movement prompts
descriptions, elicits affective responses, and shapes subjectivity, as I show by recounting
narration of the game by children who have set up their own YouTube tutorial channels as
well as Ezra’s monologues. “Children never stop talking about what they are doing or trying
to do: exploring milieus, by means of dynamic trajectories, and drawing up maps of them,”
writes Deleuze in his essay “What Children Say” (1997). These maps build on each other, but
not in the linear fashion of a story with beginning, middle, and end; rather, says Deleuze:

maps … are superimposed in such a way that each map finds itself
modified in the following map, rather than finding its origin in the
preceding one; from one map to the next, it is not a matter of
searching for an origin, but of evaluating displacements. Every map is
a redistribution of impasses and breakthroughs, of thresholds and
enclosures, which necessarily go from bottom to top. There is not
only a reversal of directions, but also a difference in nature: the
unconscious no longer deals with persons and objects, but with
trajectories and becomings; it is no longer an unconscious of
commemoration but one of mobilisation, an unconscious whose
objects take flight rather than remaining buried in the ground. (63)

Children’s desires, in other words, are not waiting to be uncovered by intrusive adults who
hope to better understand their unspoken emotions. They are constantly being produced, in
all the maps that are constantly being drawn (Ezra at the age of seven already had more
than 300 Minecraft worlds stored on the iPad). It is not simply that children are being
shaped by these spaces, or that they are constructing these spaces; there is not a clear
delineation between space and subject. As Deleuze says, “The trajectory merges not only
with the subjectivity of those who travel through a milieu, but also with the subjectivity of
the milieu itself, insofar as it is reflected in those who travel through it” (61). The “milieu
itself” has a subjectivity— something that Minecraft’s millions of youth fans attest to as they
describe their encounters with the villagers, creepers, endermen, and spiders of their
various worlds. (2-3)

18
Minecraft offers multiple ways for players to create and control their worlds; although one is
never sure when an enemy or an opportunity might pop up, players can anticipate these
events with greater certainty the more they play. As Sam, the Cornell student who has
played the game for seven years, told me, “I can give you a complete list of the enemies in
Minecraft, and tell you approximately when I should be careful about running into which
ones. Also the terrain/obstacles MC constructs are made in a somewhat intuitive manner
(e.g. so that there are cave systems and tunnels rather than random blocks missing in
random places with little structure).”

While there is a loose structure, there is much room for manoeuvring and unpredictability.
Thus, the sense of control that players feel is not gestural or contrived; they are actually
making decisions that shape their lives, from the everyday (building a house) to the
fantastical (fighting the mobs). As the New York Times Magazine writer Clive Thompson
(2016) describes it:

It’s a world of trial and error and constant discovery, stuffed with byzantine secrets, obscure
text commands and hidden recipes. And it runs completely counter to most modern
computing trends. Where companies like Apple and Microsoft and Google want our
computers to be easy to manipulate—designing point-and-click interfaces under the
assumption that it’s best to conceal from the average user how the computer works—
Minecraft encourages kids to get under the hood, break things, fix thing, and turn
mushrooms into random-number generators. It invites them to tinker.

Each time a player begins a new game, notes Thompson, “Minecraft generates a unique
world filled with hills, forests, and lakes. Whatever the player chops at or digs into yields
building blocks'', that are then used to craft tools and build an endless variety of structures
and contraptions. Thompson situates Minecraft within the history of children playing with
blocks, observing that European philosophers “have long promoted blockbased games as a
form of ‘good’ play that cultivates abstract thought.”1 Thompson lauds the game and quotes
numerous supporters from both the tech and parenting worlds who credit Minecraft for
helping a generation of kids learn the art of computer coding. (5-6)

It is a messy learning process and it is going in all sorts of directions. Totally different things
are being drawn in to the process” (167). Still, this unpredictability happens within
structures; as Keith Stuart describes his son Zac’s attraction to Minecraft: “In this universe,
where the rules are unambiguous, where the logic is clear and unerring, Sam is in control”
(quoted in Rutkin 2016). This sense of setting one’s own path—freedom— within a stable
environment heightens the feeling of agency—of world building.

The sense of “going in all directions” intensifies the affective possibilities; it is what Deleuze
called the “distribution of affects” that “constitutes a map of intensity. It is always an
affective constellation” (64). In other words, it is not just one affect experienced in isolation

19
but rather a dispersed range of affects that assumes no necessary order; this randomness
amplifies affect, pulling the entire body into the experience. As Massumi puts it, intensity
registers “at the surface of the body, at its interface with things.” Furthermore, intensity is
“outside expectation and adaptation, as disconnected from meaningful sequencing, from
narration, as it is from vital function. It is narratively de-localized, spreading over the
generalised body surface” (85). Ezra’s Minecraft narration spreads over the surface of the
game as well as his body, creating a constellation that builds on each affect, though also at
times diverging in various directions: there is the thrill of finding something, the fear of
getting stuck in a maze, the pleasure of anticipated outcomes. One affect flows into the
other in a manner that makes it hard to distinguish when one stops and another begins; this
stands in clear contrast to the earlier attempts I have described to identify and categorise
children’s emotions. Consider this narration by Ezra for its flow of affect in the midst of
world building:

I just do seeds so I can find villages and stuff. It’s just fun to type in
random numbers and see what happens. I have a feeling this is going
to be bad. This is a bad place to spawn. Now I’m in a cave looking for
diamonds. The water means I’m going to find lava, and lava means
I’m going to find diamonds. Gold means I’m going to find some
diamonds.

(sing-song voice) Going to find some diamonds, going to find some

diamonds. That’s a dead end. I mean a deep end. Let’s do 12345.
Create world. There’s a lot of flowers. That’s pretty. Mmmm. I know I
should have went with 123. There’s a bunch of bunnies getting
chased by wolves. Oh my god, I got to see this TV show. This is the
best TV show ever. You can do it, wolfie. I’ve never seen a wolf
before. Hey, get back here bunny.

I’m going to chase you with a sword. This is my kill, wolf. Die, wolf.
You know what, let’s go find a wolf to tame. Bunny! Wolfie! Wolf,
where’d you go? I got a nice juicy bone for you. Wolves? Oh, wolves!
Wherever there are bunny droppings, that’s it, I have to find where
bunny died. Mmm. Wolves, yes, over here. Yes. No wait, doggie.
Come on, come on. I’m going to need you to sit. Now stay there. Sit.
Sit. This looks like a good place to make a house. My doggies are
sitting down. I made two. (I thought they were wolves.) They are
wolves, but they turn into doggies for you.

As children build their worlds together, both within the game and via YouTube, they
construct a kind of “archive of feelings” to which they can return at any time. Even though
the Minecraft archive is constantly changing, its large and well-travelled presence on the

20
internet does provide a material space for kids to visit and revisit. It is a kind of public
sphere, or, more aptly, a counterpublic sphere, since it evades the kind of institutionalisation
that can diminish the vibrancy of the affective encounter (Cvetkovich 2003, 17). The
construction of an archive through the performance of an activity that, when gathered,
acquires some degree of material permanence, allows children a dwelling to return to, again
and again. (18)

The Minecraft world has produced a common vernacular among kids that exceeds the game,
to the degree that one can enter and engage at various levels without any specific
knowledge of the game itself. This is illustrated in my opening anecdote about the birthday
party, the hundreds if not thousands of music videos using Minecraft figures, and the wealth
of Minecraft-related products available in toy stores and elsewhere. Some teachers have
used the game as a pedagogical tool, applying it to maths, science, and other subjects.5
Other teachers have used Minecraft as the basis for kids to draw their self-portraits. At
Home Grown Hearts, a home-school collective in Michigan City, Indiana, fourth grader
Rachel produced an image of herself in Minecraft gear (see figure 7.3). In McKinney, Texas,
second-grade teacher Stephanie Mundt had her students make Minecraft images that she
then organised into an online exhibit, the “Minecraft Monster Gallery.”6 Both of these
images can be found on the Artsonia website; the company calls itself the “world’s largest
student art museum” and allows parents, teachers, and art educators to create galleries for
various student projects. (21)

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