Constructing the Enemy: Empathy/Antipathy in U.S. Literature and Law - Softcover

Srikanth, Rajini

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1439903247 ISBN 13: 9781439903247

Publisher: Temple University Press, 2011

Synopsis

An argument, based in history, law, literature, and philosophy, for empathy as an integral part of decisions about who will be designated an enemy of the state

About this title

Book Description

In her engaging book, Constructing the Enemy, Rajini Srikanth probes the concept of empathy, attempting to understand its different types and how it is—or isn't—generated and maintained in specific circumstances.

Using literary texts to illuminate issues of power and discussions of law, Srikanth focuses on two case studies— the internment of Japanese citizens and Japanese Americans in World War II, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the detainment of Muslim Americans and individuals from various nations in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Through primary documents and interviews that reveal why and how lawyers become involved in defending those who have been designated “enemies,” Srikanth explores the complex conditions under which engaged citizenship emerges. Constructing the Enemy probes the seductive promise of legal discourse and analyzes the emergence and manifestation of empathy in lawyers and other concerned citizens and the wider consequences of this empathy on the institutions that regulate our lives.

About the Author

Rajini Srikanth is Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is the author of The World Next Door: South Asian American Literature and the Idea of America and the coeditor (with Sunaina Maira) of Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America and (with Lavina Dhingra Shankar) of A Part Yet Apart: South Asians in Asian America.

Edition details

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1439903247
• ISBN 13: 9781439903247
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 220