This article examines how Milla, the Afrikaner protagonist of Marlene van Niekerk’s post-apartheid novel Agaat, engages with others’ empathy toward herself. Theorizing empathy as a multivalent engagement with others’ experiences, I argue that Milla attempts to variously invite, avoid, and manipulate others’ empathy as she negotiates the anxiety of being misunderstood, the sense of vulnerability in being understood, and the dependence of her self-image on others’ opinions. Illustrating the fraught experience of encountering empathy toward oneself—a neglected topic in studies of empathy—the novel shows that empathy is neither always welcomed nor received passively by potential empathizees. Further, I suggest, the contrast between Milla’s approaches to empathy as empathizer and empathizee ironizes her struggles by indicating her proclivity for controlling empathic interactions. Demonstrating how power relations inform empathy, Agaat complicates the popular notion of empathy as a straightforward gateway to reconciliation by highlighting its characters’ ambivalences about receiving empathy.

本文探讨了玛琳·范·尼凯克 (Marlene van Niekerk) 后种族隔离小说《阿加特》( Agaat)中南非荷兰语主角米拉 (Milla) 如何与他人对自己产生同理心。将同理心理论化为对他人经历的多价参与，我认为米拉在应对被误解的焦虑、被理解时的脆弱感以及自我依赖时，试图以不同的方式邀请、避免和操纵他人的同理心-别人的意见的形象。小说展示了对自己产生同理心的令人担忧的经历——同理心研究中一个被忽视的话题——小说表明，同理心并不总是受到潜在同理心的欢迎或被动接受。此外，我认为，米拉作为移情者和移情者的移情方法之间的对比通过表明她控制移情互动的倾向来讽刺她的斗争。阿加特展示了权力关系如何影响同理心，通过强调角色对于接受同理心的矛盾心理，使流行的同理心概念复杂化，这是通向和解的直接途径。