Week 8 Worksheet

GRST 500/501

The Threshold of the Visible World (1995) by Kaja Silverman and The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759/1790) by Adam Smith link sympathy and spectacle in ways that take paradigmatic form in Victorian fiction. In each, a confrontation between a spectator at ease and a sufferer raises issues about their mutual constitution. In each, the sufferer is effectively replaced by the spectators image of him or herself. In what I would call scenes of sympathy, these and other passages from the text document modern sympathys inseparability from representation. This text leads the reader toward the visual when the topic is sympathy and from issues that surround representation. This would include the relation between identity and its visible signs.

Jared T. Mink 2008 Liberty University Graduate Writing Center E-mail: graduatewriting@liberty.edu Phone: 434-592-4727