The body in pain : the making and unmaking of the world / Elaine Scarry.

Author
Scarry, Elaine [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
New York : Oxford University Press, 1985.
Description
vii, 385 pages ; 25 cm

Availability

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Architecture Library - Stacks BJ1409 .S35 1985 Browse related items Request
    Firestone Library - Stacks BJ1409 .S35 1985 Browse related items Request
      Firestone Library - Stacks BJ1409 .S35 1985 Browse related items Request
        Lewis Library - Stacks BJ1409 .S35 1985 Browse related items Request

          Details

          Subject(s)
          Summary note
          Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, this work explores the nature of physical suffering. 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 Henry Kissinger. Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain difficult to describe in words, it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme cases to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry goes on to analyse the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of warfare and torture, and she demonstrates how political regimes use the power of physical pain to attack and break down the sufferer's sense of self. Finally she turns to examples of artistic and cultural activity; actions achieved in the face of pain and difficulty.
          Bibliographic references
          Includes bibliographical references and index.
          Contents
          • Structure of torture : the conversion of real pain into the fiction power
          • The structure of war : the juxtaposition of injured bodies and unanchored issues
          • Pain and imaging
          • The structure of belief and its modulation into material making : body and voice in the Judeo-Christian scriptures and the writings of Marx
          • The interior structure of the artifact.
          ISBN
          • 0195036018
          • 9780195036015
          • 0195049969
          • 9780195049961
          LCCN
          85015585
          OCLC
          12285656
          Other standard number
          • 99814214487
          Statement on language in description
          Princeton University Library aims to describe library materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the collections we manage. Read more...
          Other views
          Staff view

          Supplementary Information