GRST 500/501GRST 500/501

WeekWeek 8 Worksheet 8 Worksheet The Threshold of the Visible World (1995) by Kaja Silverman and The Theory of Moral

Sentiments (1759/1790) by Adam Smith link sympathy and spectacle in ways that take

paradigmatic form in Victorian fiction. In each, a confrontation between a spectator “at ease”

and a sufferer raises issues about their mutual constitution. In each, the sufferer is effectively

replaced by the spectator’s image of him or herself. In what I would call “scenes of sympathy”,

these and other passages from the text document modern sympathy’s inseparability from

representation. This text leads the reader toward the visual when the topic is sympathy and

from issues that surround representation. This would include the relation between identity and

its visible signs.

Jared T. Mink©2008 Liberty University Graduate Writing Center

E-mail: graduatewriting@liberty.eduPhone: 434-592-4727