It’s about Empathy and So Much More: Fellow Feeling as Sensibility Capital in Graphic Narratives about Healthcare Workers
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Abstract
This article examines graphic novels whose stories revolve around the experiences of healthcare professionals. Paying attention to their themes, plot trajectories and visual elements, it discusses and reflects on the discourses surrounding the concept of empathy through a Marxian lens. My reading accentuates the view that empathy should be regarded as a resource that can be exhausted, involves cognitive/affective costs and thereby requires structural support so that the empathy-driven approach of caregiving can be sustainably maintained.
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