Unsettling Fire: Recognizing Narrative Compassion

ABSTRACT: Through close analysis of first-hand narratives of modern wildfire from residents in underrepresented rural communities in the American West, framed with cutting edge research in affect studies and narrative theory, we argue for an expansion of a theory of narrative empathy to make legible an alternate emotional response to texts: narrative compassion , in which narrative interpreters feel “toward” instead of “with” characters and/or narrators. We assess the capacity for narrative compassion to function as both a feeling toward and a standing with others, which maintains agency and lines of difference while still fostering prosocial relationships. We argue for the urgency of this expansion, given that many personal experience narratives about the environmental crisis in which we write, like narratives of modern wildfire, feature a high degree of evaluation as narrators attempt to make sense of confusing and unsettling experiences of a rapidly changing world. As such, these narratives tend to resist the emotional “twinning” upon which empathy relies and demand alternative modes of emotional engagement between narrators and interpreters.