In this succinct and urgent treatise, [D'souza] argues for an approach to the 'pain of others' that transcends empathy and identification.--Candice Breitz

[D'Souza's] unique contribution is instead thinking through the role of art in helping to produce a shift. Drawing on works spanning from the novelist Amitav Ghosh to artists Candice Breitz, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Stephanie Syjuco, she shows how, contrary to old liberal pieties, artworks can deflect empathy.--Alisa Solomon "Jewish Currents"

D'Souza echoes Édouard Glissant's edict that the global majority must assert the "right to opacity," . . . In retaining this opacity, D'Souza shows how the artist found a way not to "retreat into silence or disengagement, without being caught up in, or grasped by, a language he had never agreed to speak." These curatorial and artistic gestures, like "Stick of Gum" and "Next 2 U," imagine ways of coming together which refuse to translate, reduce, or demand coherence of one another.--Georgia Phillips-Amos "Public Parking"

[This] provocative book broadens the incisive analysis that has made D'Souza an essential critic of contemporary art.--Nate Mickelson "Brooklyn Rail"

D'Souza's analysis invites us to question how empathy and the desire for solidarity, while often serving as a unifying force, can sometimes be limited to building superficial coalitions--the so-called "big tent mentality." This approach promotes the idea of ​​a broad coalition while maintaining the very power dynamics it superficially claims to challenge.--Elide Vincenti "Public Seminar"