Individuality, Pain, and Imagination: the Relationship of the World and People – Haoduo Feng

Individuality, Pain, and Imagination: the Relationship of the World and People

HAODUO FENG

Are we all alone?

Elaine Scarry answers this question in her book The Body in Pain – she separates the world of individuals from the outside world through pain. “Intense pain is world-destroying”, she writes (Scarry, The Body in Pain 29). The world here doesn’t refer to the natural world or earth, but to the inner world of an individual, which includes the bridge that connects the world of that individual and the outside world – language. The absence of language illustrates the inexpressibility of the pain, which in fact extends to the unsharability of the destruction of an individual’s world. The physical distance between others and the one in pain might only be a “radius of several feet”, yet the pain “splits(s) between one’s sense of one’s own reality and the reality of other persons” (Scarry, The Body in Pain 4). Therefore, every individual is in fact isolated from the outside world.

As pain is the most extreme sensation, it destroys everything within the world of an individual – even time becomes meaningless. This destruction also destroys the connection between the individual world and the outside world, namely language, making the pain inexpressible. Scarry shows the inexpressibility of pain by referring to the absence of language of pain. Since language serves as the bridge between one individual and the outside world, the absence of the “language of pain” signifies the absence of the connection between the inner world of an individual and the outside world when pain destructs the inner world – the pain drowns the person, yet the only thing others see is the distorted facial expression of the one in pain (Scarry, The Body in Pain 6). Although Scarry identifies attempts from the outside world to approach the one in pain by providing examples in which the one in pain needs another person to speak on behalf of them, “the

language of agency”, the tool for this purpose, fails to apprehend the entire picture of pain (Scarry, The Body in Pain 13). This is because the person in pain effortlessly expresses the pain, while the external world fails to grasp the pain (Scarry, The Body in Pain 4). The powerlessness of others, especially for those who love the sufferers, becomes the reason for detachment. Whether the person is suddenly exposed to unbearable pain or has been suffering from some long-term torment, it always feels like the water filling their lungs, and all others can hear is a silent scream. This process extends eternally when one suffers. The individual’s world is annihilated, all the others can only watch, and no one can stop it. The destruction of one’s world happens violently yet silently to others, and it doesn’t stop at the inability to share – what drags the one in pain further into isolation is the doubt that emerges during the process of sharing.

Doubt about the authenticity of pain shared is even worse than the total unawareness of the existence of pain. As Scarry writes, “To have pain is to have certainty; to hear about pain is to have doubt” (Scarry, The Body in Pain 13). The pain truly happens, suffocating the sufferer, yet hearing about pain may raise doubts that push the sufferer further from the outside world. “Analogical verification or analogical substantiation” is the process of reminding others about the pain in someone’s body (Scarry, The Body in Pain 14). Yet, in real life, pain is always associated with physical manifestations: a scar, a punch. This diverts attention of the external world from the body in pain and exaggerates the doubt of the certainty of the pain. That hiatus of certainty leads to a negative reaction from the external world – they cast doubts. This doubt reverses the effect of sharing – it doubles the pain’s annihilating power, and becomes “the second form of negation and rejection, the social equivalent of the physical aversiveness” (Scarry, The Body in Pain 56). The world of an individual is then wholly detached from the outside world. People watch aloofly as those in pain drown and drift away. Scarry demonstrates this isolation further under an extreme condition, the interrogation between the torturer and the prisoner. The torturer-prisoner model presents the condition by isolating them and comparing the balance between the two individuals’ worlds with the introduction of power. Directly

facing the distorted face of the prisoner and hearing their tattered cries, the torturer “is not only able to bear the existence of pain, but also able to bring it continually into the present, inflict it, sustain it, minute after minute, hour after hour” (Scarry, The Body in Pain 36). The limitless conceptual distance in the limited physical space signifies the isolation in an extreme circumstance. Moreover, the question asked in an interrogation by the torturer is “mistakenly understood to be ‘the motive’”, and the answer from the prisoner “is mistakenly understood to be ‘the betrayal’” (Scarry, The Body in Pain 35). The former is “an absolution of responsibility” to the torturer for his/her cruelty, whereas the latter is “a conferring of responsibility” to the prisoner for his/her “betrayal” (Scarry, The Body in Pain 35). The external world exerts “a covert disdain for confession”, a similar yet more radical version of doubt, which exposes “the inaccessibility of the reality of physical pain to anyone not immediately experiencing it” (Scarry, The Body in Pain 29). Furthermore, with the ongoing process of torture, everything other than the prisoner turns into a weapon against them, and ultimately, the body of the prisoner is assimilated into the “agency of agony” which exposes the ultimate reason for the isolation (Scarry, The Body in Pain 47).

The body is what makes people suffer from pain, and it is the one that blocks the connection between individuals’ world and the outside world. In the case of the prisoner, Scarry suggests that the room where the prisoner is tortured is the weapon against the prisoner (The Body in Pain 40). The room is not only a narrow room – it actually represents the whole outside world, as the broader world is contracted into that room. It is the body that perceives and defines that certain motives and actions are connected to the pain, and then generates pain on the inner world – “the ceaseless, self-announcing signal of the body in pain contains the feeling ‘my body hurts me’” (Scarry, The Body in Pain 47). The existence of the torturer does not inflict pain: this pain and suffering is from the body to the inner-world, which may or may not come from the outside world to the body. Therefore, the relationship between the individuals’ world and the outside world can be simulated by the inner worldbody-outside world model. This model demonstrates the claim that the world of an individual is detached from the outside world.

Imagination, another major subject in The Body in Pain, upholds the model. Scarry states that “pain and imagination together provide a framing identity of man-as-creator” (“The Difficulty of Imagining Other People.” 169). The imagination constructs our inner world. The inner world imposes self-conscious feelings on the perception of unselfconscious objects. Such feelings, varied among people even on the same object, are personal and represent perceptions of and connections to the outside world. The fact that people always implicitly refer back to their imaginary standard when perceiving the natural world (Scarry, “The Difficulty of Imagining Other People.” 169) also justifies this point. Such personal perceptions of and connections to the outside world, however, might be distorted. As stated in another work of Scarry, the “Difficulty of Imagining Other People”, “The way we act toward others is shaped by the way we imagine them, and such imagining shows the difficulty of picturing other persons in their full weight and solidity” (99). This difficulty leads to inaccuracy of our perceptions of, and thus our actions towards other people. The inability of others to fully apprehend our perceptions on objects in the outside world and our inability to fully perceive others signifies this bilateral inaccuracy caused by our bodies. Thus the inner world-body-outside world model is established, and isolation becomes obvious.

As it is never the case where the outside world directly connects with the inner world, the body of a person is a medium for the inner world and a receiver to the outside world. It fully separates the two as there is no perfect medium that conveys every detail without loss, nor a perfect receiver that perceives all feelings without nuances of differences. Even pain, the most vibrant and acute sensation, and imagination, the construction of the individuals’ world, fail to fully penetrate the body from the external world’s perspectives. It reveals one truth about the relationship of the individual world and the outside world. That is, our individual worlds are always isolated from the outside world by our body.

As it turns out, we are all alone.

WORKS CITED

Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: the making and unmaking of the world. Oxford

University Press, 1985.

Scarry, Elaine. “The Difficulty of Imagining Other People.” For love of Country?

Debating the Limits of Patriotism, edited by Martha C. Nussbaum and Joshua

Cohen, Boston, Beacon Press, 1996, pp. 98-110.