ABOUT BOOK

In this paper, we discuss how phenomenology might cogently express ~the way painful experiences are layered with complex intersubjective meaning. In ~particular, we propose a critical conception of pain as an intricate multi-levelled ~phenomenon, deeply ingrained in the constitution of one’s sense of bodily self and ~emerging from a web of intercorporeal, social, cultural, and political relations. In ~the first section, we review and critique some conceptual accounts of pain. Then, ~we explore how pain is involved in complex ways with modalities of pleasure and ~displeasure, enacted personal meaning, and contexts of empathy or shame. We aim ~to show why a phenomenology of pain must acknowledge the richness and diversity ~of peculiar painful experiences. The second section then weaves these critical ~insights into Husserlian phenomenology of embodiment, sensation, and localisation. ~We introduce the distinction between Body-Object and Lived-Body to show ~how pain presents intersubjectively (e.g. from a patient to a clinician). Furthermore, ~we stress that,while pain seems to take amarginal position inHusserl’s whole corpus, ~its role is central in the transcendental constitution of the Lived-Body, interacting ~with the personal, interpersonal, and intersubjective levels of experiential constitution. ~Taking a critical-phenomenological perspective,wethen concretely explore how ~some peoplemay experience structural conditions whichmay make their experiences ~more or less painful.