378 RüdigerKunow
(Mo ral Consciousness26).^75 When humans agonize over extreme
corporeal or psychic pain, alone or collectively, this situation almost
always creates an intense and nearly insatiable desire for
communication, because giving voice to one's anguish is the necessary
precondition for eliciting help and other forms of compassionate
behavior from fellow human beings. In soliciting compassion and
receiving it through the willingness "not to turn one's head away but to
embrace a sense of obligation," expressions of pain and suffering are
then also elementary forms of outreach and community formation
(DeFalco 110).^76 Pain is an urgent experience and urges people to take
action.Iwillreturntothislater.
Summarizing what I have said so far, I would hazard the hypothesis
that relations between the somatic and the semantic are not, at least not
initially, complicated by unavoidable intrinsic incompatibilities, nor
havetheyalwaysbeensotroubledashasoftenbeentakenforgrantedin
constructivist arguments. Looking back at the cultural history of the
West, one can observe how, from Sophocles to Samuel Beckett, from
the anonymous creator of the Laakoon Group to Joseph Beuys,
representations of the "embodied nature" of human beings have
frequently directed their focus to a body suffering or a "body in pain"
(Scarry).Whatismore,theur-sceneofEuropeanChristiancultures,the
crucifixion, is a pain scene, whose representation, in violation of divine
injunction against "graven images," has belonged for a long time to the
standardrepertoryofthefinearts.
In the field of literature,and especially in English orU.S.-American
literatures, representations of pain in poetry, drama, or narrative, have,
overthecenturies,becomestapleitemsandfoundroutinizedforms.One
need only search in the archives of literary history to find many
exampleslikethefollowingrandomlychosenpoem:
Nothingbegins,andnothingends/Thatisnotpaidwithmoan,
Forweareborninother'spain,/Andperishinourown.(Thompson57-60)(^75) Habermas'sexamplehereis,interestinglyenough,aperson'scallforhelp.
(^76) This aspect is elaborated in Lauren Berlant's "Compassion (and
Withholding)." Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion. Ed.
LaurenBerlant.London:Routledge,2004.1-13.Print.,especially7-9.