Abstract

Abstract The subjective model of empathy, as used in Susan Miller's reading of Morris Young's Minor Re/Visions, is rooted in the prevailing misconceptions of emotion as personal and intrinsic to an isolated and fixed Western subjectivity. It poses tremendous challenges to intercultural empathy: It allows readers to project their own emotions and framework of reference to others' emotions and creates an asymmetrical, passive subject-to-object reader–writer relationship. Conceiving emotions as an index to cultural and social relationships, the intersubjective rhetoric of empathy, contrarily, positions readers as fluid intersubjects, and consequently creates an active subject-to-subject relationship that potentially subverts the power imbalance in rhetorical borderlands. Notes 1I thank my RR reviewers LuMing Mao and Lucy Xing Lu for their patient review, incisive comments, and insightful suggestions, which significantly helped improve the clarity and focus of my argument.

Journal
Rhetoric Review
Published
2012-01-01
DOI
10.1080/07350198.2012.630959
Open Access
Closed

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Cites in this index (1)

  1. College Composition and Communication
Also cites 7 works outside this index ↓
  1. 10.1215/10407391-2005-006
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  3. The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature
  4. 10.2307/1399564
  5. Feeling in Theory: Emotion after the “Death of the Subject.”
  6. 10.1080/09552369608575424
  7. The Shared Mind: Perspectives on Intersubjectivity
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