The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World

The first half of this book is both fascinating and readable, clearly organized and compelling in its arguments surrounding the body, pain, torture, war, and the self. While some of the material is difficult to read material-wise, particularly in the torture section, Scarry's points are smart and carefully explained, and examples are given as needed--not overdone. I'd classify the first half of this book as one of the most thought-provoking works of theory that I've come across, and absolutely recommend it to readers interested in cultural studies and/or writings on the body, the self, identity, torture, war, and/or the relationship of pain to the self and the effects of pain on the self.

As a sidenote, the notes in this book are show more carefully and expertly included--I don't know when I've read another work of nonfiction where the end notes have been not only thorough, but only included as actually of interest to casual readers and giving more than basic citations and/or unnecessary details. These endnotes are elaborations---any point of interest that has an endnote has an endnote of interest, in other words, and that seems a rarity.

Unfortunately, as engaged as I was with the first half of Scarry's book, the second half loses some of the drive from the first. There's some repetition, and much language that seems needlessly complex or academic, more in the line with what I expect of theory as opposed to the clear and direct language of the first portion of the book. The material is still integral to Scarry's points, and worth pursuing certainly, but it does become a progressively more difficult read. It may be to alleviate that difficulty and complexity that Scarry regularly repeats points and ideas from the first portion of the book, but those repetitions make the second half of the book more difficult to get through, nearly in the style of a collection of articles from a single author as opposed to a single composed argument.

In the end, though, I'd certainly recommend the full work to anyone interested, for there's no doubt that this work is smart and thought-provoking, both necessary and worthwhile for anyone willing to work through the ideas. show less

in an age too full of hunters, scarry is a gatherer (of myths and morels, personal letters and pieces of carved wood, shards of glass and fiber-optic cables). what a beautiful path she forges and leads us down in the process, and as for the meal... OK. all i can say right now is this book is really, really good

Scarry makes some valid (if somewhat self-evident) points about the way hawkish types use rhetoric to mask the real human costs of war. That said, too much of this text is constructed out of dubious assumptions and logical fallacies, all obscured with a lot of handwaving. She defines terms like "pain" and "torture" in counterintuitive ways so that they serve her argument... then she quietly shifts her own definitions to suit different arguments later in the book. The second section, on how creativity is an antidote(?) to pain, is largely unfathomable.

Erudite as it is humane, this book undoes the justifications for war and torture, while offering a much needed manifesto for a committed cultural practice.

This was so good yet so boring, you know?

Mentioned in The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women by Harriet Rubin.