Empathetics, Inc.: The Instrumentalization of Feeling in Medical Education

Efforts to put empathy to use in healthcare has produced a sub- genre of clinical humor that pokes fun at the instrumentalization of feeling. This talk by Jane Thrailkill, Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Associate Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, explores how dark humor, which uses incongruity to point up social and structural absurdities, might serve as a productive mode of cognition and critique. Drawing on the theories of Henri Bergson and Kenneth Burke, this talk argues that dark humor provides space for essential conversations about burnout, patient care, clinical competence, and compassion.