Dimensions of Pain Humanities and Social Science Perspectives

Pain research is still dominated by biomedical perspectives and the need to articulate pain in ways other than those offered by evidence based medical models is pressing. Examining closely subjective experiences of pain, this book explores the way in which pain is situated, communicated and formed in a larger cultural and social context. Dimensions of Pain explores the lived experience of pain, and questions of identity and pain, from a range of different disciplinary perspectives within the humanities and social sciences. Discussing the acuity and temporality of pain, its isolating impact, the embodied expression of pain, pain and sexuality, gender and ethnicity, it also includes a cluster of three chapters discusses the phenomenon and experience of labour pains. This volume revitalizes the study of pain, offering productive ways of carefully thinking through its different aspects and exploring the positive and enriching side of world-forming pain as well as its limiting aspects. It will be of interest to academics and students interested in pain from a range of backgrounds, including philosophy, sociology, nursing, midwifery, medicine and gender studies.

1. Introduction: Dimensions of Pain Lisa Folkmarson Käll 2. When Language Runs Dry: Pain, the Imagination, and Metaphor David Biro 3. Intercorporeality and the Sharability of Pain Lisa Folkmarson Käll 4. On the Borderlands: Chronic Pain as Crisis of Identity Anna Gotlib 5. Pain and Sex(uality) among Women Suffering from Vulvar Pain Renita Sörensdotter 6. The Cartesian Mind in the Abused Body: Dissociation and the Mind Body Dualism Peg O’Connor 7. Between Health and Illness: Positive Pain and World-formation Sheena Hyland 8. Doing Pain ‘Right:’ The Pleasures of Pain in Aerial Dance Jillian Deri and Wendy Mendes 9. The Good and Normal Pain: Midwives’ Perception of Pain in Childbirth Jenny Gleisner 10. Birth Work: Suffering Rituals in Late Modernity. A Case Study from a Swedish Birth-Clinic Diana Mulinari 11. Child, Birth: An Aesthetic Cressida J. Heyes

Lisa Folkmarson Käll is Associate Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University and Research Associate of Philosophy of Medicine and Medical Ethics at the Centre for Dementia Research, Linköping University, Sweden.