CorporealSemiotics:TheBodyoftheText/theTextoftheBody 373
human, especially in moments of extreme physical or mental distress,^67
canindeedfindrepresentationintheavailabletoolsofcommunicationis
not only an age-old vexing issue but one to which the gruesome
atrocities of the previous century have added new and greater moral
urgency.
The principle arguments addressing this question can be arranged
along a conceptual axis ranging from the generalized "distrust in the
signifier" of poststructuralist and analytic philosophy provenance
(Wittgenstein being a principle spokesperson here) to the post-Shoah
skepticism^68 concerning the shortcomings of language or other forms of
human communication. Both arguments are equally plausible and
culturally important, not just because they reiterate the age-old distrust
in the available means of human communication. As Elaine Scarry has
put it, pain "does not simply resist language but actively destroys it,
bringing about an immediate reversion to a state anterior to language"
(4). In addition, and more importantly, they are located at the
intersection of text/representation/language and medicine and so pose
questions about how human life can get re-present-ed in the public
sphere, that same domain where crucially important decisions, not least
decisionswhichcausepain,aremade.Ihavepresentedthemainlinesof
thediscussionintheintroductorychapterandthuscanbebriefhere.^69
(^67) Formations of physical distress are of course widely different in form, cause,
andexperience;andtheyareexpressedinabroadvarietyofterms,amongthem
anguish, ague, pain, suffering (Adorno's preferred term). As a convenient
shorthand, I will in this chapter use "pain", without wanting to suggest that all
human reactions to pathological somatic states are somehow the same. Like in
otherplacesintheGlobalNorth,U.S.-Americanculturedoesnothaveaclosely
regulatedregisterfortheirexpression.
(^68) Like Adorno, George Steiner and Elie Wiesel were convinced that the Shoah
exceededthecapabilitiesoflanguageandthussoughttoretaintheuniquenessof
the event by placing it as much as possible outside representation: Auschwitz
negatesallliterature,allsystems,saysWiesel,"toreplaceitbywords,nomatter
which words, is to denature it" (qtd. in C. Davis 25); similarly, George Steiner
insists, "[t]he world of Auschwitz lies out of speech as it lies out of reason"
(123).
(^69) An earlier version of the following argument was presented in my "The Pain
of Representation." Text or Context: Reflections on Literary and Cultural