Audiobook18 hours
The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World
Written by Elaine Scarry
Narrated by Joyce Bean
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
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.
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.
Author
Elaine Scarry
Elaine Scarry, a professor of English and American literature at Harvard University, is the author of The Body in Pain. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Related to The Body in Pain
Related audiobooks
A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics Second Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pain Studies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What World Is This?: A Pandemic Phenomenology Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Body Becoming: A Path to Our Liberation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnger: The Conflicted History of an Emotion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInto the Abyss: A neuropsychiatrist's notes on troubled minds Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Human Condition: Second Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Notes on Blindness: A Journey Through the Dark Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sludge Utopia: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Cure for Darkness: The Story of Depression and How We Treat It Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Affective Health and Masculinities in South Africa: An Ethnography of (In)vulnerability Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The déjà vu: black dreams & black time Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us About Digital Technology Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Coming Insurrection Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Complaint! Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Heartwarming: How Our Inner Thermostat Made Us Human Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHumankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Queer Art of Failure Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The German lieutenant and other stories: intégrale Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTime is the Thing a Body Moves Through Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Linguistics For You
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The History of English: The Biography of a Language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bonjour Effect: The Secret Codes of French Conversation Revealed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mastering Logical Fallacies: The Definitive Guide to Flawless Rhetoric and Bulletproof Logic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Language Began: The Story of Humanity's Greatest Invention Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Why Do We Say That? 101 Idioms, Phrases, Sayings & Facts! A Brief History On Where They Come From! Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You Say Potato: A Book About Accents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Philosophy of Style Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Dead Languages Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What Kind of Creatures Are We? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Origin of Names, Words and Everything in Between Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsF**k: An Irreverent History of the F-Word Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Cursory History of Swearing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Around the World in 80 Words: A Journey through the English Language Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Symposium, the Apology, and the Allegory of the Cave Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Language Warrior's Manifesto: How to Keep Our Languages Alive No Matter the Odds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Greatest Invention: A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Speed Reading: Learn to Read a 200+ Page Book in 1 Hour Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don't Believe a Word: The Surprising Truth About Language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What's Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prodigal Tongue: The Love-Hate Relationship Between American and British English Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Body in Pain
Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
5 ratings0 reviews