Cosmopolitan Vision of Home, Subjectivity 45that Stern’s aversion to the invasive eye of the Other is a strategy to
conceal the self-negating activities she was forced to perform in the
camp to survive, such as cremating the bodies of those killed by the
Nazis and possibly compromising herself sexually to escape a similar
fate. Yet although such speculations certainly appear viable, Phillips
by no means makes us feel we can place absolute faith in them. This
is primarily because of the narrative’s epistemic elusiveness, whereby
the reader becomes disoriented by a character that lies and appears
unable to separate reality from fantasy. As readers, we are therefore
faced with a dilemma: given the incoherent state of Stern’s narrative,
to what extent can we or should we try to fill in the gaps to arrive at
an understanding of the character?
One method the reader might attempt to deploy is an emotion-
based empathy. Such a conception of empathy has recently been
articulated by scholars working within cosmopolitan theory, most
notably by Mica Nava, who makes an interesting case for defin-
ing cosmopolitanism in terms of an empathic engagement that is
based upon the “unconscious, non-intellectual, emotional, inclusive
features of cosmopolitanism, on feelings of attraction for and identi-
fication with otherness.”^48 For Nava, cosmopolitan conciliation with
the socially excluded is therefore something that can be prompted by
an emotional exchange with the Other.
However, as the experience of reading Stern’s narrative illustrates,
such formulations of empathy, which are largely based on “emo-
tions” and “compassion,” are ineluctably unreliable due to their cul-
tural- and social specificity. Indeed, in her introduction to the book
Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion , Lauren Berlant
makes a compelling case for the limits and possible dangers of bas-
ing universal ideas on emotional conceits, arguing that “sentiments
of compassion [... ] derive from social training, emerge at histori-
cal moments, are shaped by aesthetic connections, and take place
in scenes that are anxious, volatile, surprising, and contradictory.”^49
Following a line of thought in keeping with the critical tradition of
Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, Berlant maintains that emotions
such as compassion are performative in that they involve agents,
operating within particular social and political contexts, performing
different roles within a nexus of power. From this politicized view of