Difficult Empathy and Rhetorical Encounters

Difficult Empathy takes up the question of empathy as fundamentally a rhetorical concern,  focusing on the ways we encounter and understand one another in what we  read and write, hear and say. The book centres around the argument that  empathy as a rhetorical event occurs not simply in the minds of  individuals but as a product of the rhetorical situations, practices,  cultures, and values in which we engage. Rather than identifying empathy  as a cure-all, or jettisoning the concept altogether, the author  acknowledges empathy’s potential as well as its limitations by focusing  on what makes empathy a hard and ultimately worthwhile practice. This  nuanced and original study will interest scholars working at the  intersection of rhetoric and composition with empathy, as well as those  studying empathy in fields such as critical and cultural theory,  politics, media analysis, social psychology, and the cognitive  humanities.