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Interviews | July 4, 2009

All posts by Jill Owens Powells.com Interview: Luis Alberto Urrea

2 comments By Jill Owens

Luis Alberto Urrea is a poet, novelist, journalist, and essayist who has been writing about the relationship between the United States and Mexico,... Continue »

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More copies of this ISBN:

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World

by Elaine Scarry

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Part 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.

Synopsis:

Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique , this explores the nature of physical suffering.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780195049961
Subtitle:
The Making and Unmaking of the World
Author:
Scarry, Elaine
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Location:
New York :
Subject:
War
Subject:
Mind & Body
Subject:
Theory
Subject:
Pain
Subject:
Semiotics & Theory
Subject:
Movements - Humanism
Subject:
Literature/English | World Literature | Literary Criticism
Subject:
Torture
Edition Description:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Series Volume:
no.3
Publication Date:
April 1987
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Illustrations:
frontis
Pages:
385
Dimensions:
8.06x5.38x.75 in. .66 lbs.
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