Empathy and Compassion

Generative Archaeologies of Theatre and Fiction in Lithic Societies and the Present

Abstract

This article explores a series of generative archaeologies related to the emergence of theatricality and theater, incorporating empathy and compassion into this inquiry as capacities that have been part of human experience since remote periods, such as the lithic era or prehistory. It argues that compassion and empathy are part of human expressivity while also operating as creative generative forces. To develop this argument, the article traces the emergence of fiction and theatricality through a set of theories concerning the origins of art, theater, and their subsequent transformations. Within this framework, empathy and compassion are not considered specific attributes of Homo sapiens but rather capacities that stimulate imagination, enable fiction, and contribute to the configuration of an imago mundi. This reflection seeks to rethink compassion, empathy, imagination, fiction, and theatricality — as well as the boundaries that both separate and connect them — in order to reconsider these notions both in relation to the creative subject in the arts and within research-creation practices in the performing arts.