CorporealSemiotics:TheBodyoftheText/theTextoftheBody 387
Wittgenstein's reasoning (whether or not one might take it as
adequatetothenexusofpainandrepresentation)isnonethelessofgreat
interestinthepresentcontextbecausetheterrainonwhichitunfoldsare
cultureandthecommunicativeinteractionsustainedbyculturalarchives
andtraditions.So,Iproposeherethatwearejustifiedtoreflectatsome
greater length on the cultural consequences of Wittgenstein's
epistemological skepticism,if not communicational solipsism. Were we
tofollowhisreasoningstrictusensuandtakeittoitslogicalconclusion,
we would arrive at a communicational dead end: the pain and suffering
of others must remain inaccessible and thus also forever mute. Jean
Améry, turning to an admittedly extreme case, has drawn this
conclusion:"Ifsomeonewantedtoimparthisphysicalpain,hewouldbe
forcedtoinflictitandtherebybecomeatorturerhimself"(Mind'sLimits
32-33).
Some of the questions that interest us here have already been
touched upon during an earlier discussion of Audré Lorde'sCancer
Journals(abovech."WhenLifeGoesPublic").Thisistrueespeciallyof
Lorde's distrust in the hegemonic representations of the cancer
experience.Inherdiaryentries,sherepeatedlyreferstothedifficultyof
finding the right words in her fight against the silences surrounding
cancerandalsothesubjectionofAfricanAmericans.Shespeaksof
having to deal with the pain and the fear and the death I thought I had
come to terms with once before. I did not recognize then how many
faces these terms had, nor how many forces were aligned within our
dailystructuresagainstthem,norhowoftenIwouldhavetoredefinethe
termsbecauseotherexperienceskeptpresentingthemselves.(25)For Lorde, her pain of representation is itself a representation, a
second-degreerepresentationasitwere,ofthesilencingoftheeveryday
painsemergingconstantlyinagenderedandracializedU.S.culture.
In a further move, I would like to take the socio-cultural dimension
invoked by Lorde to another plane, and do so with the help of a very
unusual text, Fayek Nakhla's and Grace Jackson'sPickingupthePieces
(1993). As a piece of life writing, the book is one continuous
"387arrative[e] of injury" (Ahmed, "Affective Economies" 118),
unusualnotonlybecauseitisapolyvocalpainnarrative,co-authoredby
the person experiencing the pain (Grace Jackson, a pseudonym), the