Empathy: An Impossible Task? Engaging with Groups in a Troubling Brexit Landscape.

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 2016–2019 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.