A Subaltern Pain: The Problem of Violence in Philosophy’s Pain Discourse

• Authors: Harfouch John
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The scientific and philosophical approach to pain must be supplemented by a hermeneutics studying how racism has complicated the communication of pain. Such an investigation reveals that not only are non-white people seen as credibly speaking their pain, but also pain “science” is one of the ways races have historically been constructed. I illustrate this through a study of Frantz Fanon’s clinical writings, along with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century slave-owners’ medical manuals and related documents. I suggest that, with this history, what philosophers understand as the problem of pain is best framed as the problem of colonial violence.

Keywords

EN

IASP definition of pain; Frantz Fanon; subaltern; philosophy of mind; racism

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Warszawski
• Journal: Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 3(9)
• Pages: 127-144

Dates

published

2019-10-31

Contributors

author

Harfouch John

• Department of Philosophy, University of Alabama-Huntsville

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Identifiers

DOI

10.14394/eidos.jpc.2019.0034