What's So Wrong with Empathy? — Conversations on Knowledge Production and Empathy in Research during Wartime
by Sierra Salazar
When I first read Julia Buyskykh's article "Old-New Colonial Tendencies in Social Anthropology" during the first week of the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute in Dr. Emily Channell-Justice's course, I was shocked by such profound, raw statements, which have entirely reshaped my understanding of the social sciences and hierarchies in academia.
"I ask for the horror I have witnessed and for the pain I have been experiencing with my soul and body to be considered within a moral space that is as valid as the distanced and more theoretically-framed responses on the war in Ukraine by "experts" from the Anglosphere who do not necessarily possess the considerable expertise or experience of the region, its languages, its history or its peoples that such commentary would necessitate." (Buyskykh 2023, 57).
Buyskykh, a historian and anthropologist originally from Ukraine, uses autoethnographic and reflexive approaches to address patronizing attitudes and colonial hierarchies in intellectual spheres. Although her focus is on anthropology, I found her insights indispensable across social sciences.
"As humans, we are social beings, and to be able to witness human suffering without a deeper response speaks to our deficiencies, not to our intellectual acumen. [...] To insist on a distinction between thought and feeling, while logical, is not humane, certainly not for humanistic intellectuals." (Buyskykh 2023, 60)
Her piece centers on the need for emotional testimonies and active empathy to overcome intellectual colonialism, and to serve as responses to collective evil and violence (Buyskykh 2023, 55). Buyskykh explains active empathy as "an engagement that is equal parts intellectual, psychological and emotional" (Buyskykh 2023, 63). Further, her article directly addresses colonial perspectives and scars present in academia today, particularly in perceptions of and approaches to Eastern Europe. To describe these perceptions, she quotes Larry Wolff: "the paradox of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion, Europe but not Europe" (Buyskykh 2023, 65).
I had often taken concepts of objectivity and the entire system of established academia as simply the way things were. Emotions and empathy were of course inevitable in the research process. Yet, I couldn't help but notice when speaking with scholars of Ukraine and listening to my Ukrainian colleagues, one had to be restrained, eloquent, and not overly emotional to be accepted in prestigious levels of academia – all of which, as my colleague Daria Anosova observed, was often expected to be conveyed in perfect English. Being only a graduate student and having a background in political science and area studies, questioning these epistemological rules of the game, so to speak, seemed not only inconvenient but also highly unfavorable.
Of course, I wanted to be 'scientific enough' in my master's thesis and future academic career. As I have learned this summer more than ever, that doesn't entail forgoing empathy or creating this sharp distinction between thought and empathy. Nonetheless, I wanted to be taken seriously. Yet, it seems not being taken so seriously can be quite an advantage for us graduate students to challenge the traditional academic system and ask risky questions that well-established academics cannot.
Admittedly, I struggled to find this hard-pressed distance and I still struggle to find it, as a student aspiring to be a scholar of Ukraine. How can anyone stay detached and claim to produce objective research when one's experiences of war and harrowing accounts from friends and colleagues are indelible? In an age where a flood of information is constantly at our fingertips, how can anyone truly 'leave the field'? And how can we even begin to think that anyone affected by war can produce research with the demands, expectations, and speed of academia today?
Moreover, how can empathy, emotions, and knowledge production be re-considered during wartime? Answering these questions in full is far beyond the scope of this blog. Rather, I merely intend to continue the conversation on knowledge production and empathy in research during wartime in the context of Russia's war against Ukraine.
To delve deeper into these questions, I spoke with Dr. Emily Channell-Justice, Director of the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program, and PhD candidate at UCL School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, Daria Anosova. In addition, Dr. Channell-Justice is the author of Without the State: Self-Organization and Political Activism in Ukraine (Channell-Justice 2022) and the editor of the volume Decolonizing Queer Experience: LGBT+ Narratives from Eastern Europe and Eurasia (Channell-Justice 2020). Anosova's current PhD research focuses on artists who have responded to Ukrainian sociopolitical context using spatial language in their practice since 2013. Furthermore, she focuses on art on the intersection between art and architecture. Both interviews were held separately, and have been edited for clarity.
Do you believe there is a naivety in thinking that we can write or research about war without emotions?
Channell-Justice: Yeah, I guess I would sort of ask why would you want to? What's the point of writing about war in a dispassionate way? It's war, it's terrible for people who are experiencing it. I don't know if that's naive. Maybe some naivety but just sort of wishful thinking about what science is. That there is some sort of objectivity, and objectivity is better. I think that kind of informs that belief that you can just dispassionately talk about war, but you have to be pretty detached from the fact that a war is happening and that it affects people in order to not have a lot of emotions, which is, I mean … There are a lot of researchers who do that.
Anosova: I think there is this naivety, but at the same time it depends on the discipline a lot I would say. If you are a historian writing about the war, like the Second World War or something happened, you have a distance with it, then you probably can research it with no emotion. But then, to be honest, I don't think you can conduct research without emotions at all because it's your human activity, you know? So if you're interested in something, that's already an emotion, which informs why you're actually doing it in the first place. So you start researching something and writing about it and dedicating a couple of years of your life into it, how can it be stripped from emotions? [...] I think that most people who are engaged in academia, they do understand that writing about war which is ongoing is horrible. And people become very distressed, and especially those who are directly involved in this war and this war affects them. I haven't encountered such blatant arrogance, so I wouldn't say so. But I would say there is some kind of expectation of objectivity.
In anthropology, there is a term "leaving the field." Meaning, you do your fieldwork, then you have to leave the field and write about it. There is an expectation that there is a distance from the field, to approach it critically. And now, I think, for me – for example – it is impossible to "leave the field." Because I am in the field constantly, even though I don't live in Ukraine. Especially with social media, and if all your family is there, and all your research subjects are there, I do not see a possibility to leave.
Do you believe it is difficult, or even worth it, to have a goal of objectivity?
Channell-Justice: I knew this political scientist who worked in Mali, and I also knew an anthropologist who worked in Mali. My anthropologist friend, he was on his way to do field work in Mali when the war started there in 2012. It displaced most of the people that he knew. It was an absolute travesty, and completely changed his field work. He was so connected and so deeply concerned about what was happening. Then, I met this political scientist who did research in Mali and he had an attitude of "I don't really like Mali, I just do research there because it's interesting [and] there's a lot going on."
Those are the kind of attitudes where if somebody said that about Ukraine, it would infuriate me. It would make me so mad that someone felt they could say, "Well, it's just so interesting. I need to understand what's happening." This is an attitude that puts you in a position to say that we have to understand both sides of the story. In the case of Ukraine, yes, you have to understand, but there's a clear aggressor. The people in Ukraine, who are being impacted are being impacted much, much differently than Russians are. The point of the story is, I didn't trust the research of the guy who didn't really like Mali, but just 'did research there.' I want somebody to care about the place they do research in order for me to think that they want their research to tell us something that matters. Maybe that's my bias.
Anosova: It really depends on the discipline. Because it's one thing if you are conducting historical research and your question is to find out some truth. And another thing is if you are doing interpretative studies of something, and I'm not sure how they could be objective in their interpretation of the events with a certain lens. Then it's not objective by default. So, it's kind of an epistemological question, right? What is objective? What is truth? And what do we consider truth?
[...] For objectivity, you have to have distance. That's the answer. And distance in time and distance personally as well. If you don't have it, it's really hard to be objective. Does it make your research worse? No. Does it make it better? No. The word research is a spectrum, and it just includes so many different things and ways of doing it. But having distance will probably be considered by the established academia as more objective. I have this feeling, but it's changing, and it depends on the discipline. I would say anthropology, for example, curatorial studies, performance studies, everything connected to contemporary art. That's what I know, I'm sure there are more disciplines. They are more inclusive to being emotional, to not having distance, and valuing that research. Everything which is based on Donna Haraway's idea of situated knowledge. That's a perfect, amazing, awesome paper. It's the best. She's talking about physics, that there is no truth and no objectivity. Everything – the knowledge is fragmented. I subscribe to that view, that knowledge is situated.
You do research, it's really fragmented, and that's great. It doesn't have to be all-encompassing. And I do a little fragment, which is very close, emotional, and full of gossip. And then my colleague does research, which has distance and scientific methods, historical methods, and working archives. And both of them, and all of them, are ways of doing research. Knowledge is not abstract. It doesn't fly in space. It's situated in a historical context. It's situated and it's located somewhere. And you are also, from that position, conducting research. You're not an alien who's flying in the sky. A lot of researchers speak about such a term positionality. Meaning where you're conducting research from. Say you are a woman, who is American, who has this [and] this background, you have your set of preconceptions about everything and I have my set. Whose is more objective?
How do you as a researcher healthily respect your own emotions before, during, and after conducting research with such deep trauma?
Channell-Justice: I can say for sure that, in real time, I wasn't processing anything [while I was doing research about Euromaidan]. For me, one thing that I always talk about – and I talk about it in my book [Without the State] a lot too – is, I was really deeply connected with the people that I worked with. One of the people who I worked with I've known for 20 years. These are people who are the only reason I have a life in academia. I owe everything to them. They took my project really seriously and they made it good.
Having people that I could talk to out about what was happening was really helpful because this is a situation where you never know what's going to happen in the next five minutes. You need trustworthy people that are going to say "Maybe don't do this," "Oh yeah, you should come to this," or "Hey, we just occupied the Ministry of Education, get over here, you're going to want to see it" – which is a true story, I got a call on the phone: "Emily, we occupied the Ministry of Education!" It was the best. Originally, I had come to the project to study the far left, [so there was pressure] to also study the far right. [The people who participated in my research] were really influential in helping me realize that no, in fact, I don't have to. There aren't two sides to this story. I'm actually telling one part of one story and that's okay.
[...] Thinking about that academically, thinking about this moment that's earth-shattering, and then saying, "I have to write an analytical piece about this." I just set that aside. I thought, I'm just going to do this. I'm just going to follow these people. I'm going to let them tell me what to do and not do, and when I get home, I'm going to deal with whether or not I have a dissertation because I couldn't see any other way out of it. I do think that ultimately writing was therapeutic in a way of allowing me to process. I wrote so much that a lot of text ended up not being published and a lot of that was just like processing: here is what happened, and here's how we have to think about it.
Finding a community of like-minded people is essential. The people who were involved in my research, the people I stay in touch with, are my dear friends. That's important, but it's also important to have friends in academia who understand. Especially when the full invasion happened, we called each other all the time. We didn't know how to deal with this, and we couldn't call our friends in Ukraine because they were in basements. So, we called each other. We built that before the invasion, but it really meant a lot to have that.
It was really helpful because it's important to have people who are your peers who are trustworthy, who you can talk out ideas with without fear of people taking your ideas. Thinking about it as cultivating ways of thinking together and not laying claim over territory. Academia can be super competitive. Many of us have had experiences with older, more established faculty taking over ideas that we gave them. [...] Academia is the meanest, least forgiving area sometimes. Having people as you go anything, having people who understand what you're going through. Sometimes, you just need to text someone and say, "I hate everything," and they'll be like, "Yeah, I know."
Anosova: I wasn't doing anything for the first half of my studies apart from activist work in London. I wasn't reading, writing, or going to college at all. I just couldn't do anything. I thought it was all useless and the only thing we should've done was hold seminars every day. And that's what we did with my colleague. Then it got a bit better, also with distance. I took a course in Bartlett [School of Literature at UCL] which was not in Area Studies and there were no Ukrainians, and there was no one interested in Ukraine. It helped me a lot to be distant. It's important not to get completely burnt out. How to do it? I don't know, but it's important to do what you think matters for your research.
How do you think future research should be conducted in Ukraine, if at all right now?
Channell-Justice: My personal take is that it has to have some emotional component to it. One of the worst things that is going to happen is people who show up in Ukraine with an attitude of, "I'm going to research about Ukraine because I'm an expert on war or migration" and they don't know anything about Ukraine. They have no respect for the fact that Ukrainian researchers have been doing research on this topic for decades. That really bothers me. That has already happened. Of course that's already happened. I'm of the opinion that empathy and emotional investment is much better than people who don't have that, who think that they can come up with something objective. [...] And honestly, a lot of Ukrainians are really tired of having microphones stuck in their faces and expected to answer questions.
So, there's no simple yes or no answer to that question, but I am fearful that the longer the war goes on, the fewer people will be able to do research in Ukraine. Anthropologists can't go and do good, ethnographic research. Ethnographic research takes months at a time, and universities aren't going to approve that. Bureaucratically, it's not super possible. It's a really tough situation. We're talking about people who are getting to go for short-term research, it just has changed the landscape a lot. We collectively as a discipline and a field have to figure out what's the best way to do it, but we have to do it in collaboration with Ukrainian academics who are making clear requests about how to do research there or not. That collaboration is crucial for me, if you are working with Ukrainians and are guided by Ukrainians who are telling you what is important and not important. I also think research needs to keep in mind how this research is going to be beneficial for Ukraine and Ukrainians, and collaboration and guidance from Ukrainian researchers is the best way to do that.
Anosova: It should be really well funded. I'm not even joking. All these trips, especially if you are not from there, you should be supported. I think it's tragic that now research in Ukraine is, you know, considered unethical in academia and people and resources have to go through these ethical reviews which are not approved because of the whole system of ethical review is based on this anthropology from the 20th century when people were conducting extractivist research and colonizing. When the research was a part of the imperial project. I think now, it's really hard for many people to travel to Ukraine just because they're not supported financially and institutionally. And we should "wait for the war to finish," but if it doesn't finish in 10 years or 15 years, then there's no resource that is going to be conducted. It's horrible. So I think that is very important. Research has to be funded and supported there and well supervised.
What kind of advice would you give for undergraduate and graduate students who have gone into their programs, who are starting to study Ukraine, after the full-scale invasion?
Channell-Justice: Learn Ukrainian, that's the first one. Learn Russian if you feel like it but you don't have to. Don't let anybody force you to learn Russian. Take advantage of the programs that have invited Ukrainians scholars. Ukrainian scholars and scholarship are more accessible than ever before. That's a really important step to being a well-rounded scholar of Ukraine, to make sure that you know what the landscape of that research of your interest looks like in Ukraine and among Ukrainian scholars abroad. I think that's key. Make sure that your community of supporters are people who will support you doing research in Ukraine, about Ukraine, and not force you to do comparative research because Ukraine has been marginalized as the "and Ukraine" all the time. That's been hugely detrimental. So, push back against that. It's up to the new generation of people who study Ukraine to say, "Ukraine is at the center of the universe of what I study."
Anosova: Good supervision – that helps. Speaking with someone who is your formal supervisor or informal supervisor. Someone senior who has more experience or who you think has more experience, sometimes they don't. So that helps a lot – finding someone who you respect and seeking advice. That helped me a lot, with my supervisor, who really understands the context and is really engaged. It's so important, much more important than school. School doesn't do anything to you. And also, what does it give you? A card to the library? That's all. But your supervisor is everything. He or she will give you contacts. He or she will invite you to conferences, their projects. They will guide you with everything, point you where you should look. [...]
When you're a student, you're not taken that seriously, and that is your strength. Take how we discussed in [Serhii] Bilenky's class, that countercultures [in the Soviet Union] were not taken seriously, that's why they were not detained. So, maybe, when you're not taken seriously, that's your strength to be truly open with your thoughts.