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Empathy as a mechanism of readership: reconceptualizing the practice of reading and the praxis of theory through empathy
Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2025.
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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University of Pretoria
2026
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| _version_ | 1869483751154647040 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author2 | Guldimann, Colette |
| author_browse | Guldimann, Colette |
| author_facet | Guldimann, Colette |
| collection | Thesis |
| dc_rights_str_mv | © 2024 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. |
| description | Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2025. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/108590 |
| institution | University of Pretoria (South Africa) |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2026-07-01T04:03:58.415Z |
| license_str | Other — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UPSpace — University of Pretoria Institutional Repository |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| publishDateRange | 2026 |
| publishDateSort | 2026 |
| publisher | University of Pretoria |
| publisherStr | University of Pretoria |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UPSpace — University of Pretoria Institutional Repository |
| spelling | oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/108590 Empathy as a mechanism of readership: reconceptualizing the practice of reading and the praxis of theory through empathy Guldimann, Colette aaroncloete@gmail.com Cloete, Aaron UCTD Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Jacques Lacan Critical Theory Postcritical Rheory The City We Became Empathy Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2025. This dissertation lays out a conceptualisation of empathy framed through an engagement with Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory. This theory of empathy presents the act of reading as an aggregating process of empathetically accumulating vocabularies to aid in the construction of the self. The goal of this is to better structure the practice of reading within affective spaces as an act which allows the subjective experience of the reader to be conceived of as a critical process of theory generation. The idea of empathy is defined in order to provide a tool that reconciles emotion and critique. This contends with Bruno Latour’s assertion that theory has run out of steam and in so doing creates a model of empathetic critique that frames the generation of theory as ongoing, exciting, and rooted within expressions of self. Empathy is defined as a relationship built between the reader (the physical agent) and the textual other (the semblant). This definition pushes affect beyond the category of passive emotional response to text and into the realm of active critical meaning generation. This dissertation embeds critique within empathy and establishes empathy relationships as attempts at understanding and acknowledgements of self as construction. This does away with the idea of theory as sacrosanct, unchangeable canon in order to prioritise subjective introspection as a way of empathetically engaging with and creating new theory. The focus on empathetic engagement with critique overturns bad faith structures of academic interaction. This process, along with the creation of what I call a critic speaker, will be clarified and extended by empathetically engaging with N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became. English MA (English Literature) Unrestricted Faculty of Humanities None 2026-02-23T12:42:06Z 2026-02-23T12:42:06Z 2026-04 2025-11-25 Dissertation * A2026 http://hdl.handle.net/2263/108590 Disclaimer Letter en © 2024 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. application/pdf University of Pretoria |
| spellingShingle | UCTD Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Jacques Lacan Critical Theory Postcritical Rheory The City We Became Empathy Empathy as a mechanism of readership: reconceptualizing the practice of reading and the praxis of theory through empathy |
| title | Empathy as a mechanism of readership: reconceptualizing the practice of reading and the praxis of theory through empathy |
| title_full | Empathy as a mechanism of readership: reconceptualizing the practice of reading and the praxis of theory through empathy |
| title_fullStr | Empathy as a mechanism of readership: reconceptualizing the practice of reading and the praxis of theory through empathy |
| title_full_unstemmed | Empathy as a mechanism of readership: reconceptualizing the practice of reading and the praxis of theory through empathy |
| title_short | Empathy as a mechanism of readership: reconceptualizing the practice of reading and the praxis of theory through empathy |
| title_sort | empathy as a mechanism of readership reconceptualizing the practice of reading and the praxis of theory through empathy |
| topic | UCTD Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Jacques Lacan Critical Theory Postcritical Rheory The City We Became Empathy |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/2263/108590 |