Empathy and shame through critical phenomenology: The limits and possibilities of affective work and the case of COVID-19 vaccinations.

ABSTRACT

This paper begins by developing the critical phenomenologies of shame and empathy. It rejects that empathy is the supposed antidote to shame, and rather demonstrates the ways in which they function in parallel. The author contends that both shame and indeed empathy risk objectifying and fetishizing the other who is being shamed or empathized with. This argument and phenomenology about the relationship between shame and empathy is then applied and further developed through a case study of COVID-19 vaccinations. The author explores whether empathy and shame ever "work" to increase vaccine uptake, and ultimately argues that both affects do and do not depending on the structures of power informing the specific context.