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Title: The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World by Elaine Scarry ISBN: 0-19-504996-9 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: April, 1987 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.12 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Necessary Read in Light of Current Events
Comment: I was originally assigned to read this book for a course on performance art. I found it a particularily useful tool for understanding performances in which the artist causes himself or herself bodily pain.
However, after the recent WTC and Pentagon attacks, it began to haunt me once again -- in particular Scarry's central claim that "what is quite literally at stake in the body in pain is the making and unmaking of the world" (23). Her chapter "The Structure of War" is indispensible under the current circumstances. She argues that "The dispute that leads to war involves a process by which each side calls into question the legitimacy and thereby erodes the reality of the other country's issues, beliefs, ideas, self-conception. Dispute leads relentlessly to war not only because war is an extension and intensification of dispute but because it is a correction and reversal of it. That is, the injuring not only provides a means of choosing between disputants but also provides, by its massive opening of human bodies, a way of reconnecting the derealized and disembodied beliefs with the force and power of the material world" (128). This is such a compelling argument given the lack of a Palestinian state, and the terrorists' belief that Islam is threatened by Western beliefs and practices (i.e. calls its "reality" into question). However, it seems that terrorism shares qualities with nuclear war, which she argues has more in common with activities of torture. It becomes clear that terrorism inhabits a grey area (Scarry doesn't specifically discuss terrorism, and so the reader must extrapolate her argument).
Further, her chapters on "Making" are important. Structures such as the WTC, the Pentagon, and aircraft are more than just mere symbols of Western power -- they are a literally a projection of the live body (she relies heavily on Marx here). The book also brilliantly discusses issues of visibility and invisibility. These issues keep coming up in commentary on the attacks: the U.S. goverment repeatably states that some aspects of the war on terrorism will be "visible" and others "invisible." Additionally, some have argued that the attacks were designed specifically for vision and media presentation. We have to examine to what extent "visibility" and "truth" are conflated in American culture.
The one drawback of the book is that it was written in the 1980s, before the Gulf War and other events that have changed the "face of battle." Regardless, this controversial and insightful book is still much more than a starting point -- and it has been so helpful for me (emotionally and intellectually) as I try to grasp what these current events mean.
Rating: 2
Summary: Fascinating and Flawed
Comment: The Body in Pain includes many interesting ideas and theories that could be made into engrossing analyses, yet Elaine Scarry manages to even make torture boring. Her frankly very intelligent observations would be much better suited to a 20 page scholarly essay than a 300 plus page repetitive rant that seems to care more about displaying her verbal acuity than proving a point, let alone attracting readers. I have counted the number of times she uses the word "sentient" and "sentience": some pages include these terms more than 8 times. One would think that an author so obviously bent on proving her intelligence would deign to consult a thesaurus. Perhaps "feeling" is too plebeian a term for her....
Rating: 5
Summary: Helpful in Working With Torture Victims
Comment: I have worked with several individuals who suffered extreme physical torture sometime during their lives. Scarry's work helped me to understand the internal world of the sufferer in ways I would never have even begun to approach. Each one of these individuals lacked the language to discuss their experiences. What they were left with was inarticulatable images, physical sensations, emotions, profound helplessness and alienation. Scarry's book helped me find language to give to my patients -- language that helped to normalize their reaction to, and experience of inexplicable events. Her exploration of the abyss of human destruction is accomplished such original, humane, and thoughtful detail. Her book is an ingenius work of art.
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Title: On Beauty and Being Just. by Elaine Scarry ISBN: 0691089590 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Dreaming By the Book by Elaine Scarry ISBN: 0691070768 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
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Title: Resisting Representation by Elaine Scarry ISBN: 0195089642 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: September, 1994 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag ISBN: 0374248583 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 19 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Discipline & Punish : The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault ISBN: 0679752552 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 25 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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