Scarry's view on physical pain

Elaine Scarry immediately jumps in describing physical pain as three subjects:
"first, the difficulty of expressing physical pain; second, the political and perceptual complications that arise as a result of that difficulty; and third, the nature of both material and verbal expressibility or more simply, the nature of human creation. (pg. 3) She goes on to explain that all three can be pictured as concentric circles where the center of one, is the center for all three.

For the first topic she explains it crystal clear. When a person hears of another persons physical pain, the events seem to have no reality. It lacks clarity and truth, whereas if it was the person telling of there own pain, the story is "effortlessly" grasped. The description of pain seems to be unsharable, as if it is for only the individual to experience personally. Scarry explains that this phonomenon occurs beacuse physical pain resists language. "... one at last reached physical pain, for physcial pain---unlike any other state of consciousness---has no referential content." (pg. 5) When you stop and think about it no word actively describes physical pain. The few words that may materialize in your mind a few seconds later are mere objects that you have somehow correlated with the word. This word completely destroys any objectification with words.

The second section speaks of political complications with the difficulty of physcial pain. She describes it as "..the problem of pain is bound up with the problem of power...". (pg.12) She then goes on to list examples of how it is. The first key point is the fact that physical pain can go unnoticed. "How is it that one person can be in the presence of another person in pain and not know it---not know it to the point where he himself inflicts it, and goes on inflicting it?" (pg. 12) Physical pain has become caught up so many peoples lives that they have learned to hide it. They try to overpower its apparent damage. Also with it being sure a destructive word from language, describing its affects is also difficult. Physcial pain is nearly impossible to express, so it is easier to express other things instead. Scarry goes on to give the example, "..even where it is virtually the only content in a given environment, it will be possible to describe that environment as though the pain were not there." (pg. 12) This also jumps right into torture. Torture is a means to gather information through physical pain and it is quite affective. There are very little verbal strategies for supressing the assault and this is catagorized by being labeled "the language of agency" (pg.13).

The third and final section goes on to describe the nature of human creation. She describes that everything has a structure to it. She describes the structure of torture and what they looked for and how torture is approached. This section describes how torture "deconstructs" rather than "destroys" the prisioner being interrogated. Scarry describes it as a "...step-by-step backward movement along the path by which language comes into being and which is here being reversed..." (pg. 20). This shows that this physical pain destroys its victim over time. It break the victim down step-by-step. She goes on to describe war as a structured creation as well. This book is built like a war, that is containing arguments and sub-arguments.

This reading does an excellent job of breaking down "physcial pain" into sections and analyzing each section one by one. This was very interesting and made me see physcial pain and its destructive nature more clearly.