Since its publication in 1985, Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain has become a seminal text in the study of embodiment. In its foregrounding of the body in war and torture, it critiques the minimising of the body in questions of politics, offering a compelling account of the structure and phenomenology of violent domination. However, at the same time the text can be seen to shore up a mind/body dualism that has been associated with oppressive forms of gendering, racialisation and disablement. Divisive, powerful and elegant, the text has been central in the shaping of approaches to embodiment over the past 30 years. This special issue revisits Scarry's text in the light of 30 years of scholarship on embodiment and the body. Its legacies and limits are exemplified through a series of articles that mobilise the arguments of The Body in Pain even as they push at the limits of the text.
AméryJean (1980) At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
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AvelarIdelbar (2004) The Letter of Violence. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 31.
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Bakare-YusufBibi (1999) The economy of violence: black bodies and the unspeakable terror. In: PriceJanetShildrikMargrit (eds) Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader. New York: Routledge, pp. 311–323.
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BendelowGillianWilliamsSimon (1995) Pain and the mind-body dualism: a sociological approach. Body & Society1(2): 83–103.
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BlackmanLisa (2010) Embodying affect: voice-hearing, telepathy, suggestion and modelling the non-conscious. Body & Society16(1): 163–192.
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BlackmanLisaVennCouze (2010) ‘Affect.’ Body & Society16(1): 7–28.
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BourkeJoanna (2019) Elaine Scarry, Michael Haneke's Funny Games and the Structure of Cruelty. Body & Society25(3): 281–297.
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BudgeonShelley (2003) Identity as an embodied event. Body & Society9(1): 35–55.
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ButlerJudith (2010) Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?London: Verso.
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ButlerJudith (2011) Bodies That Matter: On the discursive limits of ‘sex’. London: Routledge.
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CavareroAdriana (2011) Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence. New York: Columbia University Press.
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CloughPatricia THalleyJean (eds.) (2007) The Affective Turn: Theorising the Social. Durham: Duke University Press.
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DawneyLeila (2019) Affective War: Wounded Bodies as Political Technologies. Body & Society25(3): 194–217.
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FanninMaria (2019) Labour Pain, ‘Natal Politics’ and Reproductive Justice for Black Birth Givers. Body & Society25(3): 167–193.
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FeldmanAllen (1991) Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
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FournierValérie (2002) Fleshing out gender: crafting gender identity on women’s bodies. Body & Society8(2): 55–77.
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GreggMelissaSeigworthGregory (eds) (2010) The Affect Theory Reader. Durham: Duke University Press.
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HammersCorrie (2014) Corporeality, sadomasochism and sexual trauma. Body & Society20(2): 68–90.
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HartmanSaidiya (1997) Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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HuzarTimothy J (2017) Horrorism in the scene of torture: reading Scarry with Cavarero. Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies2(1): 25–43.
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LeeWendy Lynne (2005) On the (im)materiality of violence: subjects, bodies, and the experience of pain. Feminist Theory6(3): 277–295.
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LeysRuth (2011) ‘The turn to affect: a critique.’ Critical Inquiry37: 434–472.
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McSorleyKevin (2019) Predatory War, Drones and Torture: Remapping the Body in Pain. Body & Society25(3): 218–244.
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MerrillJamieHanningJamesLeftlyMarket al. (2015) Revealed: How torture was used to foil al-Qaeda 2010 plot to bomb two airliners 17 minutes before explosion. The Independent, 1 March. Available at: http://ind.pn/1ApeQhR. (accessed 10 February 2018).
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PatersonMark (2019) On Pain as a Distinct Sensation: Mapping Intensities, Affects, and Difference in ‘Interior States’. Body & Society25(3): 245–280.
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Richter-MontpetitMelanie (2014) Beyond the erotics of Orientalism: lawfare, torture and the racial–sexual grammars of legitimate suffering. Security Dialogue45(1): 44.
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ScarryElaine (1985) The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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ScarryElaine (2014) Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
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ShillingChrisMellorPhilip A (1996) Embodiment, structuration theory and modernity: mind/body dualism and the repression of sensuality. Body & Society2(4): 1–15.
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SpillersHortense J (1987) Mamma’s baby, papa’s maybe: an American grammar book. Diacritics17(2): 64–81.
