“To have great pain is to have certainty; to hear that another person has pain is to have doubt,” Professor Elaine Scarry has said, and furthermore stipulates that, “Physical pain not only resists language, but actively destroys it.” She has suggested “fictional analogs” could have application in conveying the existence of pain where there is doubt. We consider whether the speculative novel, The Illumination, could serve as a fictional analog. The novel centers on a sudden phenomenon in which a light shines from the part of anyone’s body where there is pain, and so erases any doubt. Though the author’s motivation for the phenomenon was not based on Scarry’s premise, we contemplate possible applications for it in Biomedicine and other realms where people in pain seek help.
We are joined by Dr. Ron Boeding from the iSpine Clinics located in the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota metropolitan area, serving patients from Minnesota and western Wisconsin. The clinics specialize in spine, neck, and extremity pain disorders and offer comprehensive pain management, interventional procedures, and physical medicine services. Dr. Boeding is board certified in family medicine and interventional pain management.
Sources:
Primary
The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier, Pantheon, 2011. It was named a Best Book of the Year in 2011 by National Public Radio, The Seattle Times, The Kansas City Star, and Philadelphia City Paper.
Secondary
The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry, Oxford University Press, 1985
The Culture of Pain by John B. Morris, University of California Press, 1991
Link:
Russell Teagarden’s blog piece on The Illumination
Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: russell.teagarden@theclinicandtheperson.com.
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Executive producer: Anne Bentley