1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910464172303321

Autore

Strick Simon <1974->

Titolo

American dolorologies : pain, sentimentalism, biopolitics / / Simon Strick

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Albany : , : State University of New York Press, , [2014]

©[2014]

ISBN

1-4384-5023-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource

Disciplina

306.4

Soggetti

Sentimentalism

Suffering - Social aspects - United States

Pain - Social aspects - United States

United States Civilization

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

What is dolorology? -- Sublime pain and the subject of sentimentalism -- Anesthesia, birthpain and civilization -- Picturing racial pain -- Late modern pain.

Sommario/riassunto

American Dolorologies presents a theoretically sophisticated intervention into contemporary equations of subjectivity with trauma. Simon Strick argues against a universalism of pain and instead foregrounds the intimate relations of bodily affect with racial and gender politics. In concise and original readings of medical debates, abolitionist photography, Enlightenment philosophy, and contemporary representations of torture, Strick shows the crucial function that evocations of "bodies in pain" serve in the politicization of differences. This book provides a historical contextualization of contemporary ideas of suffering, sympathy, and compassion, thus establishing an embodied genealogy of the pain that is at the heart of American democratic sentiment.