The novel resists easy characterization on three counts: it belongs to no obvious genre, it has no clear-cut set of characters, and it has no single topic or thesis. TI - The Pointlessness of Futilitarianism: Sarah Schulman and the Many Themes of EmpathyĪB - Sarah Schulman’s novel Empathy appeared in the early nineties, at the height of the AIDS crisis and in the depths of America’s first adventure in Iraq. I argue that whether Schulman realizes it or not is beside the point: Empathy and other novels of this type give lesbians an audible voice and compel others to listen-in literature and well beyond. On the macro-level, “theme” creates a constellation of motifs which do not simply give a voice to the voiceless but also compel the already voiced to listen. On the micro-level, “Theme” acts to force the reader into an empathetic position with respect to the main character. In this paper, I take a technical approach to “theme,” distinguishing it from topic and thesis.

This argument has been the staple of a strain of literary criticism I call “futilitarian”-the argument that the social problem novels of the nineteenth-century served only to bolster the cohesion and moral clarity of the liberal ruling classes.

Although the title announces that the topic or thesis of the book is “empathy,” the content of the book seems to suggest that empathy is a superfluous emotion that leads only to guilt and shame.

Sarah Schulman’s novel Empathy appeared in the early nineties, at the height of the AIDS crisis and in the depths of America’s first adventure in Iraq.

Empathy by Sarah Schulman