Series: Critic's Essay Series

Can empathy deliver political change? Does art that elicits emotional identification with others take us where we need to go? In Imperfect Solidarities, writer and art historian Aruna D'Souza offers observations pulled from current events as well as contemporary art that suggest that a feeling of understanding or closeness based on emotion is an imperfect ground for solidarity. Empathy—and its...

In Perpetual Slavery, Ciarán Finlayson investigates the relationship of art to freedom in the work of Cameron Rowland and Ralph Lemon, who both utilise imagery of labour haunted and structured by the historical experience of slavery. Finlayson suggests that these two artists' work overcomes the dichotomy between the recording of history and its interpretation by making both the object of...

Queer theory has often been hesitant to align itself with a politics of the state, approaching it with a negative or pragmatic framework. A Queer Theory of the State expands an earlier online essay from The Point by historian Samuel Huneke to offer a more optimistic perspective. Rather than eschew political engagement with democratic theorising, Huneke asks how queer theory...

What is evil? How is it categorised, understood and used? Surveying examples from cinema, music and politics, Notes on Evil provides observations on the mechanisms by which societies construct enemies in a collective bid to expel their 'problems'. But does the label of evil help to rid us of social ills? Or does it just lead to superficial purges that...