Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another individual. It can be viewed as putting oneself in the shoes of another. In Dramaturgy in Motion, Profeta uses the term kinaesthetic empathy, an empathy that arises through motion. The idea of kinaesthetic empathy states that the way an individual is able to apprehend movement is “through experiencing it vicariously” (p.147). While individuals become aware of other bodies in motion, they inevitably feel a connection and respond through materialising as to what it would be like to perform the motion.
Profeta looks at where kinaesthetic empathy derives from, and how one can increase their kinaesthetic empathy. The fundamental concept where kinaesthetic empathy derives from is that if one has a body of their own, they have the basic instrument to become aware of other bodies in motion. Kinaesthetic empathy was further proven by the scientific discovery of the mirror neuron. The mirror neuron shows that when individuals watch a body in motion, neurons associated with their bodies performing that same motion are firing silently in the brain (p.147). However, the mirror neuron does not validate kinaesthetic empathy in its entirety. Mirror neurons only describe the physical behaviour, and does not expand on any emotional behaviour or associations that may come as a result. The resultant emotional behaviour remains subjective to the individual, depending on their values, circumstance and past experiences. Science explains that one way to increase kinaesthetic empathy is to experience the movement for yourself. This research derives from a study that demonstrated when dancers viewed movement within the form they were trained in, their neural activity was much higher. Therefore, scientists came to a conclusion that kinaesthetic empathy clearly increases with a shared base of body knowledge. Subsequently, science explains that one way to increase kinaesthetic empathy is to experience the movement for yourself, and increase the shared base of body knowledge (p.147).
When I think of the word empathy, I imagine putting myself in another person’s situation and imagine what they have gone through or are going through. However, what is interesting about kinaesthetic empathy is that it appears to happen subconsciously. I do not need to make a conscious effort to make a connection with the body in movement. However I feel I need to make a conscious effort in order to be empathetic to a situation, especially if it’s a situation of unfamiliarity. It’s fascinating to discover that there are different types of empathy, and how kinaesthetic empathy can occur at such a subconscious level.
Question:
Why does delivering and recognising motion always appear to happen at a subconscious level?
Hi Lubnah,
Now I will expose myself as a total geek by saying that your question makes me so happy. Kinesthetic empathy is what we call an “affect” mechanism. Movement prompts forces or feelings in the body and as you write, how we interpret these feelings are predicated by culture, upbringing, experience, etc. Emotions are what we name the impulses or forces. We “feel” and then our brain process that intensity of feeling as sadness or joy or whatever we have historically associated that feeling with to an emotion. The qualities of the affect (or lack of it) also shape how we interpret it. Motion catalyzes affect in the beholder — it doesn’t really happen on a subconscious level as much as it happens on an involuntary level and then your cognition processes it as an emotion. But if you read Spinoza – he says that affect really is on a continuum between sadness and joy and its about intensities rather than qualities. This is a great question and an excellent keyword essay!
FROM: https://www.theoryculturesociety.org/the-future-of-affect-theory-an-interview-with-margaret-wetherall/
Also, historians (particularly at the Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development) are beginning to articulate a practice approach to the questions that puzzle them such as the chronology of what they call ‘emotional styles’. While Ian Burkitt in his work on embodied practice was already, of course, making these connections, along with Bourdieu scholars, Valerie Walkerdine in her work on affective communities, and researchers in body studies (such as Shilling and Crossley) who were interested in embodied dispositions, body apprenticeships, and so on.
Certainly, some human affect and emotion is beyond the conceptual reach of practice but if one thinks of the social regularities and patterns around affect then many clearly conform to a practice account. It is illuminating to consider, for instance, the intertwining of vocabularies, bodies, contexts and actions in an emotion episode, the open-ended flexible application of ‘skills’ and the ‘routines, ruts and grooves’ in brains and bodies acquired developmentally, the ways in which the embodied dispositions of emotion are carried into new contexts, how these become canonical and conventional, the relation to reflexivity, and variable degrees of conscious and non-conscious enactment.
This leads me to think that there are particular affect-laden, social phenomena that can be usefully investigated through a practice lens. Take, for example, the ‘feeling bubbles’ making up the calendar of national life – institutionalized moments of celebration (New Year), grief (remembrance services), schadenfreude (party political conferences) etc. What are these other than a canon of affective practices – triggered in familiar ways, with familiar patterns, too, of resistance? Equally, it is a useful stretch to think of ‘communities of affect’, following the lead of historians, investigating the ways in which sub-groups and sites of social relations become defined through distinctive, recurring affective activities and performances. Then, so much of public affect is communicative and bound up with communicative practices such as narrative. Affective-discursive practices such as ‘doing righteous indignation’ or ‘doing being the victim’ are so salient and crucial in political life and yet are deeply methodical and mannered.