The Visitor's Empathy (Wednesday Post)

"The visitor is forced to become an inmate. Subjected to the same sorts of humiliation and depersonalization. Made to feel powerless, intimidated by the might of the state [. . .] We suffer the keepers' prying eyes, prying machines, prying hands. We let them lock us in without any guarantee the doors will open when we wish to leave. We are in fact their prisoners until they release us" (Wideman 52).

I found Wideman's description of his experience as an imprisoned visitor largely problematic. While I understood the comparison he was making, and could see the ways in which both visitor and prisoner are surveilled and subject to the whim of guards and wardens, it sounded like Wideman took it a little too far when he claimed that "we let them lock us in without any guarantee the doors will open when we wish to leave." On the contrary, the freedom to leave at the end of the visit, to escape this inherently oppressive and silencing space, is exactly the distinctive quality which marks the visitor's privileged position. Just as proponents of rights for minority groups argue against the "in a wheelchair for the day" experiment (by which able-bodied individuals claim to have experience "what it feels like" to be in a wheelchair by using one for a day), Wideman seems to be ignoring the fact that he simply cannot understand what it truly feels like to be a prisoner--precisely because he has the freedom to leave. Being a prisoner who can leave is simply a paradox.

This forced metaphorical identification between Wideman and his brother brought me back to conversations we have had about Sommer's piece, and her exploration of the reader's empathy. She explains that Western eyes should push back on their instinctual desire to empathize with the minority writer, as in many cases, they both cannot and should not understand the minority's experience. Though Wideman's passage read as beautiful literature and raised important points about surveillance, agency, and authority, it also read to me as a perfect example of this unwelcome empathy--an empathy that lacked understanding of Wideman's own standpoint and privilege.