ABSTRACT
How does pain enter politics? How are lived experiences of pain shaped by contact with others? Pain has often been described as a private, even lonely experience, as a feeling that I have that others cannot have, or as a feeling that others have that I myself cannot feel (Kotarba 1983: 15). And yet the pain of others is continually evoked in public discourse, as that which demands a collective as well as individual response. In the quote above from a Christian Aid letter, the pain of others is first presented through the use of the word ‘landmines’. The word is not accompanied by a description or history; it is assumed that the word itself is enough to evoke images of pain and suffering for the reader.2 Indeed, the word is repeated in the letter, and is transformed from ‘sign’ to the ‘agent’ behind the injuries: ‘Landmines are causing pain and suffering all around the world.’ Of course, this utterance speaks a certain truth. And yet, to make landmines the ‘cause’ of pain and suffering is to stop too soon in a chain of events: landmines are themselves effects of histories of war; they were placed by humans to injure and maim other humans. The word evokes that history, but it also stands for it, as a history of war, suffering and injustice. Such a letter shows us how the language of pain operates through signs, which convey histories that involve injuries to
bodies, at the same time as they conceal the presence or ‘work’ of other bodies.
