Much to say about this utterly bad ass piece of critical scholarship. But the one thing that jumps off the page is the pre 911, pre Guantánamo treatment of torture as beyond the pale of moral conduct.

Yes absolutely (as should go without saying, but ironically and unfortunately, in 2022 must be said).

And after the normalization and reification of torture post 911, into “enhanced rendering”, and entertainment via shows like 24. I feel a sense of shame in the contrast between then and now.

This book is about pain.

But pain considered in such a multivariate, creative, rigorous and relentlessly curious way, as to render the previous statement (this book is about pain) as banal in the truest sense.

In the same way Emanuel Kant took doubt to its ultimate terminus, and arrived at the irrefutable truth ‘something exists’ even if that something is only a disembodied thought.

Scarry arrives at a similar dual terminus, that suffering, is for the suffer, the very definition of certainty, while conversely, it is for the observer, the very definition of doubt.

To suffer is to be alone.

As a therapist, I understand that the best one can do as a witness of another’s suffering, is lean into your own senses of empathy, and to loan the other your earnest belief in their account.

This is akin to the faith of the religious.

Because the clients self report is frequently the only instrument of measure that we have, and faith in the process of therapy is frequently the only container we have for the groundless complexity of the impossible profession we purvey.

But given all that, there is still a chasm of doubt between the therapist and the client.

As the science of psychology plainly demonstrates.

Sometimes (many times) people are distorted or even blind to the objective reality represented in their subjective experiences.

For the therpaist, challenging or even deconstructing and destroying someone’s maladaptive beliefs is frequently the most important part of the gig.

The act of validating another’s pain as absolutely real, and simultaneously empowering the client to deconstruct it, and supplant it with a more effective, less miserable, and equally real experience is not as easy as it sounds.

Physicians treating pain have an infinitely more fraught dilemma, in that they prescribe addictive opioid medications, often based purely on the clients self reported levels of pain, which is most commonly the result of the lesser but still real harm of the interventions that they themselves administer.

The chasm of doubt between the physician and the client (particularly given the ever looming prospect of drug seeking and opioid addiction) is so vast that the humanity of each participant is partially, or totally lost in the transaction.

Now consider (as Scarry does) pain in the context of the relationship between the tortured and the torture, the slave and the master, opponents in war, or the victims (everyone) of a nuclear conflict.

This book was published in 1987. From the perspective of 2022, it is easy to forget how terrifying it was to be in the grip of the Cold War.

It was almost impossible to be carefree without the aid of drugs and alcohol. The nearest equivalent today is the ever looming reality of the creeping death of our planet.

But for those of you who didn’t live through the Cold War, imagine if you will, the omnipresent threat of being thrust into the absolute nightmare of the end stage of climate catastrophe, with the additional problem of exposure to nuclear radiation, occurring in the blink of an eye, at the push of a button, by vengeful, deeply flawed leaders (Reagan v. Khrushchev), in an atmosphere of total hostility, paranoia and fear, only three or four decades out from the brutal horror and trauma of WWII.

This is the psychic environment that the Body In Pain was conceived and birthed in. It is much less of a finished statement, than a grasping, scratching, clawing, writhing meditation on the uniquely central role that pain, vulnerability and destruction plays in the human experience.

I think this writing is unparalleled in many respects.

When I read the negative reviews of this book, I am baffled.

How fucking good does a woman have to be to get even a modicum of acknowledgment and respect?

This book is brilliant. Scarry is (yes, I’ll say it) scary brilliant. Most of the reviews focus on the content, and then criticize it for being passé, or lightweight.

That perspective bypasses the absolute genius and revelatory quality of the writing.

Her passages on the Bible are both generous and scathing. They bravely and apparently lovingly process, deconstruct and reframe the Old and New Testament in to embodied mythic structures.

The skeleton of the western cannon.

Her perspective on the Bible had enough critical facility and distance to (temporarily) assuage my enormous aversion to Christianity and religion. And her deep understanding and obvious love for the beautiful language, images and metaphors in the Bible, legitimately drew me in and actually got me interested in and even considering reading and engaging with “that text” (a first for me).

NOTE: I’m not actually going to read the Bible, but I thought about it, and that’s HUGE.

Anyway…

If I had met a priest or theologian like Elaine Scarry in my more impressionable youth, I might have joined the clergy.

Thank God I waited to read this book