Empathy an impossible task? Engaging with groups in a troubling Brexit landscape

The Brexit referendum produced a tumultuous reminder of the emotional-affective dimensions political life in UK. This article attends to affective experience, fantasies and identifications that shape engagement within shifting landscapes politics structures feeling underpin them. reflects on project undertaken between 2016 2019 which we convened eight groups ‘Leavers’ ‘Remainers’ with an explicit questioning place possibility ‘empathy’ small spaces widening fray. Through detailed thematic analysis group experiences discourses, including personal-reflective accounts from conductor, discuss ‘clusters preoccupation’ characteristic these challenges researching empathy turbulent psycho-political mood landscape.