Posthuman affect and the need for empathy in Richard Flanagan’s The Living Sea of Waking Dreams

Abstract

This article aims to discuss what empathy means and how it functions in the post-Anthropocentric, posthumanist world through an analysis of Richard Flanagan’s The Living Sea of Waking Dreams. There are numerous studies concerned with ecocriticism or animal studies that look at non-human beings from an ethical perspective, but the role of empathy in posthuman studies still needs further attention. As Rosi Braidotti argues, the term “human” has always been based on hierarchical dichotomies, which means the new, posthuman position of Man is not necessarily catastrophic. In other words, the decentralisation of Man and his placement in his environment in a non-hierarchical manner does not mean abandoning all the humanist ideals; instead, concepts like equality, freedom and reason that we associate with European humanism still carry the same value, albeit from a wider perspective. Following this perspective and Spinoza’s philosophy, this article will focus on a more critical (or European) form of posthumanism and will analyse Flanagan’s novel in this light. It also aims to show how Spinoza’s concepts of monism and affect offer a positive insight into the interconnectedness of species and the ways empathy operates in the post-Anthropocene.