Unsettling Empathy. Bjorn Krondorfer
Unsettling Empathy
Peace and Security in the 21st Century
Series Editor: Charles Hauss, US government liaison
Until recently, security was defined mostly in geopolitical terms with the assumption that it could only be achieved through at least the threat of military force. Today, however, people from as different backgrounds as planners in the Pentagon and veteran peace activists think in terms of human or global security, where no one is secure unless everyone is secure in all areas of their lives. This means that it is impossible nowadays to separate issues of war and peace, the environment, sustainability, identity, global health, and the like.
The books in this series aim to make sense of this changing world of peace and security by investigating security issues and peace efforts that involve cooperation at several levels. By looking at how security and peace interrelate at various stages of conflict, the series explores new ideas for a fast-changing world and seeks to redefine and rethink what peace and security mean in the first decades of the new century.
Multidisciplinary in approach and authorship, the books cover a variety of topics, focusing on the overarching theme that students, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers have to find new models and theories to account for, diagnose, and respond to the difficulties of a more complex world. Authors are established scholars and practitioners in their fields of expertise.
In addition, it is hoped that the series will contribute to bringing together authors and readers in concrete, applied projects, and thus help create, under the sponsorship of Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP), a community of practice.
The series is sponsored by the Alliance for Peacebuilding, http://www.allianceforpeacebuilding.org.
Unsettling Empathy
Working with Groups in Conflict
Björn Krondorfer
London • New York
Published by Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.
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Support for this publication was provided by the Martin-Springer Institute, Northern Arizona University
Copyright © 2020 by Björn Krondorfer
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: HB 978-1-78661-581-7
ISBN: PB 978-1-78661-582-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Is Available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020931533
ISBN: 978-1-78661-581-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN: 978-1-78661-582-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN: 978-1-78661-583-1 (electronic)
Acknowledgments
Though the bulk of this book was written during my 2019 spring sabbatical, Unsettling Empathy has been in the making for a long time. I have published smaller pieces on reconciliatory processes and unsettling empathy over the years, but I always found it daunting to write a more comprehensive account of my work with groups in conflict. People familiar with or curious about my work kept asking about such a book because they wanted to learn more about how trust-building intergroup processes unfold in conflict settings. They wanted to understand the dynamics that make or break a process in which people explore adversarial relations due to past and present injuries and injustices. I hope that Unsettling Empathy meets their expectations.
Twenty-five years ago I published my first monograph, Remembrance and Reconciliation: Encounters Between Young Jews and Germans (1995). In that book I tried to make sense of how the Holocaust affected relationships between non-Jewish Germans and Jewish Americans born after 1945. I reported on various encounters between these two groups, relying on examples from the then-available literature as well as on my own experience as active participant and facilitator. I situated and contextualized these encounters within the intellectual and public debates of the 1980s and 1990s on Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past). The book emphasized the vital role of memory in dialogue and reconciliation settings. Without fully acknowledging the past, I argued, trust would be impossible to establish, thus thwarting the restoring of relationships between the Jewish community and German society.
I still consider the acknowledgment of an unjust and traumatic past essential for reconciliatory processes, but I have since realized that memories can be as much a stumbling block as a building block when working with groups in conflict. Memories tied to large-group identifications, iterated in national narratives, embraced as chosen cultural traumas, and recounted in personal storytelling have the power to fixate our gaze on the past in such a way that we are no longer capable of imagining a different future. Since the 1995 publication, I have arrived at a more nuanced and complex understanding of the (psycho)social and (psycho)political dynamics that obstruct or advance our efforts of seeking alternative pathways in protracted conflicts.
In this light, Unsettling Empathy can be seen as a companion volume to Remembrance and Reconciliation. Each book has been written in a different moment in time. Remembrance and Reconciliation was completed in the optimistic spirit and enlightened certitude of the 1990s when coming to terms with the past coincided with real signs of political progress: the fall of the Berlin Wall, glasnost, and the expansion of liberal democracies. Unsettling Empathy has come into being during a period of increasing cultural pessimism, where we are witnessing the spread of populism and the rise of illiberal democracies that hark back to nationalist and ethnocentric narratives of the past. Because of this changed landscape, Unsettling Empathy, I believe, is more important today than it would have been twenty-five years ago.
I could not have completed this book without the inspiration, encouragement, and support from many people and organizations over the years. First and foremost, I want to thank those who have collaborated with me as cofacilitators, friends, or in facilitator-mentor teams. Among them, in alphabetical order, are Sybol Anderson, Karen Baldner, Marco de Carvalho, Avner Dinur, Wafa Ebenberi, Michal Hochberg, Elke Horn, Tara Kohn, Antwan Saca Saleh, and Michael Sternberg. For lively conversation, wise guidance, caring support, and warm hospitality, my thanks go to Mehnaz Afridi, Alexander Alvarez, Elizabeth Anthony, Sami Awad, Andreas Beier, Sharon Benheim, Julia Chaitin, Melissa Cohen, Lisa Green Cudek, Jackie Feldman, Janice Friebaum, Moti Gigi, Dorota Glowacka, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Amos Goldberg, Beata Hammerich, Doa Hassouneh, Andrea Leute, Albrecht Mahr, Brigitta Mahr, Hanns Maul, Naomi Morrison, Samson Munn, Sondra Perl, Johannes Pfäfflin, Peter Pogany-Wnendt,