Abstract
According to world famous primatologist Frans de Waal we live in ‘the age of empathy’. De Waal is part of a long tradition of biologists who have argued for recognizing individual emotions, altruism and morality in human and non-human animals alike. This is an intellectual tradition that resonates with the current-day attention for the emotional lives of animals. It is an approach to interpreting human and non-human animals’ behaviour that finds its popular expression in a variety of animal whisperers that we come across nowadays, on television and in books, ranging from dogs, to horses, and elephants. Whisperers and ethologists alike base their work to a large extent on detailed and prolonged observations of animals and not only attempt to scientifically prove empathy in both humans and non-human species, but also use empathy as a research method to try and better understand (non-)animal behaviour.
This paper reflects on the concept of empathy in relation to Giles Deleuze’s ‘becoming’ in the context of qualitative research methodologies, and from a transdisciplinary perspective. I will particularly focus on perspectives from sociobiology, philosophy and literary criticism, in order to further J.M. Coetzee’s famous discussion, based on Thomas Nagel, of the boundaries of human empathetic capabilities. I will argue that our capacities of and skills in empathy lie at the very heart of all behavioural and interpretative research, ranging from ethology to ethnography.
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- 1.
In this paper ‘social animals’ refers to both human and non-human animals, unless indicated otherwise. This is in line with Calarco (2008), who is following Donna Haraway’s ‘A cyborg manifesto’ in which she states that ‘By the late twentieth century … the boundary between human and animal is thoroughly breached … many people no longer feel the need for such a separation’ and argues that ‘we could simply let the human–animal distinction go’ (Calarco 2008, pp. 148, 149, italics in original). For a thorough historical exploration of what it means to be human, see Bourke (2011).
- 2.
The Sunday Times, 5 June 2011, ‘Jumbos just like us.’
- 3.
- 4.
Liebenberg reports similar observations about the San in southern Africa. ‘In order to understand animals, the [San] trackers must identify themselves with an animal’ (Liebenberg 1990a, p. 88). Therefore, ‘the [San] knowledge of animal behaviour essentially has an anthropomorphic nature’ and ‘although their knowledge is at variance with that of European ethologists, it has withstood the vigorous empirical testing imposed by its use.’ Therefore, ‘anthropomorphism may well have its origins in the way trackers must identify themselves with an animal’ (Liebenberg 1990a, p. 83).
- 5.
Speciesism is defined by Joanne Bourke (2011, p. 132) as ‘discrimination based on membership of a species’. As Bourke in her book (2011) makes abundantly clear, ‘historically the two [speciesism and racism] are inextricably intertwined, the former being used to bolster, explain, and justify the latter’ (LaFolette and Shanks 1996, p. 41). Based on Bourke’s (2011) analysis we can add sexism as a third ‘inextricably and intertwined’ thread to LaFolette and Shanks quote.
- 6.
The skills of especially the San people in southern Africa in tracking animals have been extensively and notoriously used both in Zimbabwe (by the Selous Scouts) and in South Africa (by Koevoet) to track down humans in the context of counter-insurgency operations, where so-called ‘terrorists’, or ‘terrs’, were ‘tracked down’ in order to be eliminated; people were ‘hunted down’ like animals (cf. Kamango 2011).
- 7.
www.genna.gender.uu.se/themes/animals/, accessed 21 April 2011.
- 8.
www.genna.gender.uu.se/themes/animals/events/zooethnographies/, accessed 21 April 2011. See also Bourke (2011).
- 9.
For an extensive critique of sociobiology from an anthropological perspective, see Sahlins (1977).
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Wels, H. (2013). Whispering Empathy: Transdisciplinary Reflections on Research Methodology. In: Musschenga, B., van Harskamp, A. (eds) What Makes Us Moral? On the capacities and conditions for being moral. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 31. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6343-2_9
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