376 RüdigerKunow
affective, evaluative) and their relation to the medically measurable
conditions (Yorkston et al. 243-44, 246-48). In the present, cultural-
critical context, such accuracy, useful as it is for therapy, matters less
than public presence, as pain has moved from the domain of the body
into the parallel universe of representation.^72 So we must not just talk
aboutthepainofapersonorabodybutaboutthepainofrepresentation,
inbothsensesoftheterm:a)findingrepresentationforone'sbodilypain
is in itself an excruciating process; and b) pain is recognizable, "exists"
only as represented pain. In accordance with this practice, instead of
presenting a more or less plausible definition of what pain is, the
purpose of the following reflections is to describe what itdoes, to
illustrate some of the social and cultural work performed by intensely
felt,liminalconditionsofhumanphysicality.
PuttingItinWords,or,AnotherDistrustintheSignifier
During the last decade, the hegemony of cultural constructivism in
the Humanities has increasingly been challenged by proclamations of a
"return of the real" or "a new materialist turn" (Coole and Frost 4)^73 in
the social sciences and also in Cultural Studies. High up on the list of
complaintsagainstconstructivismhasbeentheobservationorallegation
that the latter had "forgotten–not just the body, but that which makes it
possible and which limits its actions: the precarious, accidental,
contingent, expedient, striving, dynamic status of life in a messy,
complicated, resistant, brute world of materiality.. ." (Coole and Frost
6-8; Grosz 2).^74 The much-touted "distrust in the signifier," a trademark
(^72) This change of venue reflects larger changes in popular culture which in the
viewofonecommentatorisbecoming"anincreasinglyconfessionalculture,one
in which the democracy of pain reigns supreme. Everyone may not be rich and
famous but everyone has suffered" (Hughes qtd. in Illouz,ColdIntimacies121-
22).
(^73) Key texts here are Foster, Hal.TheReturnoftheReal.ArtandTheoryatthe
End of the Century.Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996. Print.; Coole and Frost's
edited collectionNewMaterialisms. – For a political cum ecological framing of
thisdiscussioncf.Bennett,VibrantMatter.
(^74) Even though Grosz's critique is specifically directed at the constructivism of
recent feminist theory (Butler being one of her targets), the direction of her