It was only after I experienced the illness and posterior death of a loved one that I became aware of the frailty of my own body. After it, I was now aware of the possibility of getting hurt, and every new injury and wound would become the main center of my attention. Every small accident would made me think of getting sick, which would also mean the fear of getting terminally ill. I began documenting my injuries, in a period where, out of chance, I was constantly getting hurt [Figure 1 and Figure 2]. The act of documenting my accidents emerged as a reaction to the realization of my fragility and vulnerability. This heightened awareness led to a sense of estrangement from my own body, prompting a contemplation of my personal pain.

Most of us prefer not to think about feeling pain or the idea that our bodies can be harmed. After all, who would willingly live in a burning house? In a somewhat idealized way of thinking, we usually don't dwell on the possibility of negative things happening to us. However, when we come across a wounded body, it forces us to confront this reality head-on. But pain is subjective, and we have no capacity of experiencing the pain of others. To feel pain and to understand it has been a subject of discussion in the philosophical realm, and this essay will delve into how the body in pain has been described through medicine and art history. As an introduction to this idea, we begin with a quote of Elaine Scarry of her book The Body in Pain: »to have great pain is to have certainty; to hear that another person has pain is to have doubt.« 1 We have made medicine to be a tool to conceptualize and comprehend pain. However, for it to be subject to examination, it must be constrained within the realms of language, implicating its inherent limitations. Pain is resistant to language, but it is this resistance that gives pain a sympathetic value; »whatever pain achieves, it achieves it in part through its unsharability, and it ensures this unsharability through its resistance to language.« 2 Pain is a sensorial, perceptual matter; we may experience it ourselves, yet struggle to articulate its nature. We might witness someone in pain but grasping that pain within our own personal experience is elusive. We rely on our own bodies to comprehend the pain felt by others, whether through hearing a scream, listening to words, or observing physical reactions. Pain becomes understandable through a relational perspective, as we can empathize and envision its sensations by drawing upon our own bodily experiences.

Language was the medium by which medical practice made the body an object of study, relying on the own body perception to understand pain, to resort to its sympathetic value. The perceptual quality of medicine is emphasized by Michael Foucault in his book The Birth of the Clinic: »The clinic was probably the first attempt to order a science on the exercise and decisions of the gaze.« 3 Foucault emphasizes the relationship of the gaze to the body, and how the clinical method transformed the body into an object of study. Medical gaze is what »sees«—and therefore, what constitutes—the illness. The author describes illness through linguistic syntaxis, wherein the constitution of an illness is delineated through symptoms and signs. Symptoms are »on the same level as nature,« 4 a sign is the announcement of that symptom, and a sign may resort to language—the sign identifies itself with the symptom, the symptom is the morphological basis of the sign. Illness can be defined as the aggregate of signs and symptoms, employing both statistical and relational methodologies. These methodologies consist of the comparison of a group of individuals, that will determine, first, the characteristics of an individual, second, what normal functioning is, and third, a recognition of the frequencies and simultaneities that will disrupt the normal functioning. Foucault refers to this as a »totalization of the organisms«, or the creation of an imaginary, external body that will prescribe what is and what is not, and this body is possible only through words. Illness is now definable, »it is no longer a question of giving that by which the disease can be recognized, but of restoring, at the level of words, a history that covers its total being […] there is disease only in the element of the visible and therefore statable.« 5

The medical gaze has played an important role in influencing our perception and comprehension of our bodies. It has, to a certain extent, distorted our inherent perception, and dulled our sensory experiences. Despite our attempts to articulate our experiences through language, the inadequacy of words becomes apparent, particularly when confronted with the ineffable nature of pain. As Romanian artist, performer and writer Alina Popa became terminally ill, she chronicled her disease in a diary that was edited and published as a tribute after her death in 2019 [Figure 3]. Navigating her ailing body, she recognizes the newfound constraints and perceives her transforming body as an unfamiliar entity, forcing her to engage with the world in an unforeseen manner, a path she had not anticipated for herself. There exists an incongruence between her corporeal and cognitive aspects, leading to a struggle in self-recognition within her own physical form. The affliction is conceptualized as an external dimension that she opposes, despite acknowledging the empirical reality that the affliction is intrinsic to her own body—or, more broadly, her own self. She finds herself reluctant to grasp on a cognitive level her own transient body. Coming back to Foucault, illness is confined to the visible, and, hence, the expressible realm, which refers to the limitations of language and the understanding of pain. Popa’s experiencing the paradox of not aligning her concept of self with her ailing body exemplifies how limited the concept of an illness can be. The formulation of illness as a concept is rooted in sensory perception, meaning an inherent unreliability, and constraining empirical apprehension. Foucault refers to this as a »precarious balance,« when referring to the medical gaze: »A hearing gaze and a speaking gaze: clinical experience represents a moment of balance between speech and spectacle. A precarious balance, for it rests on a formidable postulate: that all that is visible is expressible, and that it is wholly visible, because it is wholly expressible.« 6 Popa’s struggle »is not with a disease but between the huge thing on [her] left thigh and [her] mind.« 7 The experience of being ill always exceeds the diagnosis of illness, and medical discourse proves inadequate in capturing its wholeness. This realization only comes to us when we feel ill or see ourselves hurt. While confronting terminal illness, Popa reached the recognition that her body was no longer a familiar entity to her:

Dissociation during illness may occur due to a lack of comprehension regarding the internal processes taking place within us, trauma fundamentally modifies our relationship to our own body. A primary motivation behind documenting my injuries was to observe the changes and evolution they underwent over time. Additionally, witnessing myself with substantial bruises shook me, and documenting them almost served to acknowledge the pain I was experiencing. As discussed in this text, for the medical point of view there is a link between what we see and what we enunciate, and this enunciation affects what we see. The medical gaze established itself by developing a systematic approach to comprehend suffering bodies and has built an imaginary, collective body that gathers an idea of pain, based on a fiction [Figure 4]. Foucault expresses this notion beautifully:

But the experience of being ill exceeds the medical experience, primarily due to the inherent challenge of articulating the experience of pain and establishing an effective means of communicating one's suffering. Expressing pain suggests the need for its alleviation, but given that the experience precedes language, this pursuit becomes challenging, carrying political consequences. Elaine Scarry delves into the political dimension of pain, emphasizing how the challenge of accurately describing, communicating, and comprehending others' suffering can lead to either exacerbating or alleviating such distress. This dynamic, in turn, contributes to the creation of unequal power situations, that will be described further on in this text through Susan Sontag’s essay »Regarding the Pain of Others.«

The ability of an image to surpass language and operate within a symbolic realm prompts us to shift our focus to the representation of the body rather than the body itself, which is intertwined with Scarry's notion of the political dimension inherent in the expression of suffering. In »Regarding the Pain of Others,« Susan Sontag delves into how war has been documented throughout history and the importance of the photographic image as a testimony of war, talking about the cultural impact of capturing and witnessing suffering bodies. The essay delves into the exponential growth of photography and its broad accessibility, extending beyond the realms of art creation. This trend inevitably permeated various societal domains, including the context of war. With the advent of photography, documenting the atrocities of war became feasible. However, Sontag deconstructs the conventional idea of mere documentation, and delves into the process of fictionalizing war through the narratives woven by photographic images. The ease of producing photographic images contributed to their eventual widespread dissemination, and this oversaturation becomes particularly problematic, especially concerning images depicting violent events, and witnessing an act of violence directly is not equivalent to viewing an image of it. This distinction can impact how spectators perceive a violent act or its visual representation, leading to an unconscious »unacknowledged pain« that could potentially intensify suffering. 10

The philosophical discourse on pain also explores how the suffering body interacts with the world; the body itself can negotiate with or symbolically control its external environment. Neil Oxenhandler, in his article »The Bodily Experience of Simone Weil«, examines how the French philosopher, mystic and political activist embodied the tension between the symbolic and biological realms in both her work and life. The author implies throughout the article that Weil’s self-destructive tendencies might as well come from the sense of abandonment she experienced during her early childhood, and subsequently, these tendencies would turn to spiritual significance. 11 Employing psychoanalytic terms, the author highlights how Weil used her body to actively influence or manipulate the world in a symbolic manner, as is customary with every diagnosis of hysteria. 12 As explored in this text, acknowledging pain at the cognitive level typically results in a dissociation between the mind and the body. In this context, Weil's situation is noteworthy as it is paradoxical, because she might be acknowledging her own suffering and embracing it for a greater purpose, or alternatively, this dissociation could be so profound that she might not even recognize her own suffering, perceiving it instead as a mystical experience. Regardless, self-destructive behavior can pose a challenge to the medical gaze, as it contradicts the idealized image of a healthy body constructed by medicine, and this challenge might be related too to how we use language to portray our body.

My curiosity in observing the development of my injuries was, in part, connected to a morbid intrigue in self-destructive behavior, despite not engaging in direct self-harm. It came from an interest to witness my body in pain, as it served as a reminder of my own grief and sorrow [Figure 5], my body became a recollection of trauma. There is an obsession with the image of the body in pain, and we undergo pain as part of our regular human experience. It can be asserted that the discourse on pain is an historical construct, operating as a linguistic structure rooted in the objectification of the body. However, it remains true that pain, as a subjective experience, resists itself to articulation. Experiencing pain can create a sense of constraint, due to the challenges in expressing or comprehending it fully. This limitation may extend beyond individual experience to broader political and social implications, highlighting that the precise acknowledgment of pain is a crucial step towards healing. This acknowledgment is also confronted by the various mental states that may lead to self-harm. Overall, it can be concluded that language contains pain, even though it is an experience rooted in the senses and the body. This containment may result in a disconnection between the felt sensation and one's understanding of that feeling. The images of my wounded body could serve as a bridge between these two realms.