RT Journal Article
T1 Performing feminist empathy in Claire Keegan's Small Things like These (2021): from affective encounters to (cruel) optimism
A1 Pérez Vides, María Auxiliadora
AB This article dwells on Sarah Ahmed’s notion of “affective relationality” and her suggestion that empathy involves the subject’s reaction to the pain of others and willingness to be affected by it. Such postulates are used to explore Small Things like These (2021), the latest novel by the acclaimed Irish writer Claire Keegan. I contend that the book contributes significantly to demand an imperative culture of feminist empathy towards former inmates of the Magdalen Laundries system in Ireland and their ongoing predicaments. This is achieved through the protagonist’s constant uneasiness for how responding proactively to injustice and to the suffering of the Magdalen Other may destabilise his own well-being and that of his family. Ireland’s culture of empathy is, thus, sharply cross-examined by means of a critique of the many fallacies of the moral order against which the story is projected. My analysis focuses on the complexity of affects addressed in the text, where interpersonal encounters and intersubjective identification between the empathetic subject and the object of empathy are foregrounded as relevant for the achievement of a more ethically sustainable society that transcends the temporal framework of the novel.
PB Taylor and Francis
SN 1744-4233
YR 2024
FD 2024-12
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10272/24746
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10272/24746
LA eng
NO Pérez Vides, Auxiliadora. "Performing feminist empathy in Claire Keegan's Small Things like These (2021): from affective encounters to (cruel) optimism". European Journal of English Studies 28.1 (2024): 10-26. DOI 10.1080/13825577.2024.2420931
NO This work was supported by the Research Plan of the Centre COIDESO, University of Huelva, Spain. The article was written as part of the TRANS-USE Project (“Transformations: queer practices of use and embodiment in post 9/11 narratives in English” PID2023-146450NB-I00), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Innovation, Science and Universities.
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 30 may 2026