Abstract
The Brexit referendum produced a tumultuous reminder of the emotional-affective dimensions of political life in the UK. This article attends to affective dimensions in political experience, the fantasies and identifications that shape engagement within the shifting landscapes of politics and the structures of feeling that underpin them. The article reflects on a project undertaken between 2016 and 2019 in which we convened eight groups of ‘Leavers’ and ‘Remainers’ with an explicit questioning of the place and possibility of ‘empathy’ in the small spaces of a widening political fray. Through detailed thematic analysis of the group experiences and discourses, including personal-reflective accounts from the group conductor, we discuss ‘clusters of preoccupation’ characteristic of these groups and the challenges of researching empathy within the turbulent psycho-political mood of a Brexit landscape.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the contributors to this research project that led to the writing of this article. These include John Biggs, Sonia Devji, Darren Ellis, Irene Eskanazi, Lynn Froggett, Jacob Johanssen, Brett Kahr, Amy Tatum and Katy Vaughan. Our thanks also to the Bournemouth University Women’s Academic Network and the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences for supporting the research discussed in the paper. The project followed the Bournemouth University Code of Ethical Practice and was approved by the Bournemouth University Research Ethics Committee.
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Yates, C., MacRury, I. Empathy an impossible task? Engaging with groups in a troubling Brexit landscape. Psychoanal Cult Soc 26, 473–496 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41282-021-00238-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41282-021-00238-0