The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the WorldPart philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, The Body in Pain is a profoundly original study that has already stirred excitement in a wide range of intellectual circles. The book is an analysis of physical suffering and its relation to the numerous vocabularies and cultural forces--literary, political, philosophical, medical, religious--that confront it. Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Kissinger, She weaves these into her discussion with an eloquence, humanity, and insight that recall the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre. Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain enormously difficult to describe in words--confronted with it, Virginia Woolf once noted, "language runs dry"--it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme instances to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry analyzes the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of torture and warfare, and shows how to be fictive. From these actions of "unmaking" Scarry turns finally to the actions of "making"--the examples of artistic and cultural creation that work against pain and the debased uses that are made of it. Challenging and inventive, The Body in Pain is landmark work that promises to spark widespread debate. |
Contents
Introduction | 3 |
The Conversion of Real Pain into | 27 |
The Juxtaposition of Injured Bodies | 60 |
Copyright | |
4 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
action activity alteration Amnesty International artifact artifice attributes becomes belief benign bodily body and voice capacity capital capitalist central chapter civilization Clausewitz conflation contest creating creation crucial culture deconstruction derealization described Deuteronomy disembodied earlier eliminated embodied entails event example existence external fact Federalist Papers fiction God's graven images human body hurt identify imagination infliction injuring interior International invented invoked issues Judeo-Christian labor language loser Marx Marx's molten calf moral nature nuclear war objectified occurs Old Testament one's original outcome participation passages perceived perception person phenomenon physical pain political population precisely present prisoner prisoner's problem projection reality realm reciprocation referential relation requires Ronald Melzack scriptures self-extension sentience separate Sheila Cassidy side specific story strategy structure substantiation Surplus Value thing tool torture torturer's verbal visible weapon wholly William McNeill winner words World War II wounding York