“Should You Encounter”: The Social Conditions of Empathy

Abstract

In this essay I analyze a series of first-person homeless accounts and reader responses in the Las Vegas Sun newspaper in order to highlight the social conditions that support or inhibit empathy. I review the rhetorical study of empathy and incorporate work from social psychology and moral philosophy to identify and examine the conditions of assessing victimhood and recognizing of self-other overlap. I find the irony of empathy to be that the very social forces that would necessitate an expansion of empathy also inhibit it through increasing social division and the reluctance of readers to recognize their own vulnerabilities in the positions of others. I contend throughout that a focus on empathy as an individual experience overlooks the social production of empathy, which is more appropriately considered through a rhetorical perspective.

Keywords

empathy, identification, homelessness, Las Vegas

How to Cite

Leake, E., (2018) ““Should You Encounter”: The Social Conditions of Empathy”, POROI 14(1): 3, 1-26. doi: https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1265

Rights

Copyright © 2018 Eric Leake
777

Views

557

Downloads

Share

Authors

Eric Leake (Texas State University)

Download

Issue

Publication details

Dates

Licence

CC BY-NC 4.0

Identifiers

Peer Review

This article has been peer reviewed.

File Checksums (MD5)

  • pdf: 75e9d1efcd56459bc01e0b3b14b684c5