This article explores the concept of empathy as an affirmative feminist engagement with Tracey Emin’s short film Homage to Edvard Munch and All My Dead Children (1998). I consider the ‘work’ that art does in terms of empathic possibility asking why the film triggers this response and what this means for empathy research as an extension of the cross-disciplinary turn towards affect. I argue for empathy as the ethical negotiation of differences made possible by the affirmation of ‘what-is’. In particular, I focus on the status of the scream, which retains an ambiguous relation to what Barbara Bolt has called the ‘regime’ of representation (2004) yet remains a crucial aspect of the experience of Emin’s film.
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