Learning the Improvisation of Empathy through a Series of Car Accidents
In this article, I analyze self-disclosure in autoethnography and the various degrees of risk experienced by researchers based on social position. I use autoethnography to consider the possibility of researcher empathy that relies on sensory connection between self and other. I use my personal experience with car accidents to analyze cultures of empathy and caregiving. Connections among self-disclosure, empathy, and social action are explored. In autoethnography, the researcher takes on the risk of being subject as well as observer and self-discloses personal information as a way to make clear possible bias and awareness of the partial and political aspects of research observation. I use autoethnography to consider the political hope of feminist research to raise consciousness of injustice and encourage new emotional awareness (empathy) on the part of the community as catalyst for social change.