'The Arithmetic of Compassion' Rethinking the Politics of Photography

Since compassion consists in a pressure to acknowledge and respond to particular suffering, a pressure so ineluctable as to seem mathematical, the very idea of a compassionate politics verges on incoherence. For politics typically demands precisely that we attend to large numbers and it is just there that compassion falters and loses its grip. Matters, however, are even more complicated than that. Compassion is not simply insufficient. It is a trap. Its limitations give rise to a set of politically repugnant temptations - pity, indifference, cynicism, and resentment. The inadequacies of compassion and the unattractive mutations to which it is susceptible are especially clear in discussions of the politics of photography, in particular with respect to what we commonly suppose is its documentary function. Some might think this odd terrain for a political theorist. Yet as artist and critic Martha Rosler, for instance, suggests, “documentary engages with structural injustices, often to provoke active responses.” So here, with matters of causality, of justice, and of the springs of political action, we encounter central preoccupations of political theory. And given the visual nature of much contemporary politics - governments, international agencies, political parties, non-governmental organizations, and social movements, for instance, all rely on photographic imagery in their efforts to generate support for or create opposition to policies, initiatives and events - those preoccupations emerge as central to political studies generally. Documentary practice allows us - pardon the pun - to bring compassion and its vicissitudes into focus in one particular domain. This is important insofar as some theorists suggest that compassion is a cardinal virtue for liberal democratic citizens. Conversely, by focusing on the arithmetic of compassion it is possible to identify aspects of current documentary practice that impede efforts to deploy photography for political purposes.