Intercorporeality and the Constitution of Body Schemata: A Case of Pain
In: Pain without Boundaries: Inquiries across CulturesSearch for other papers by Lisa Folkmarson Käll in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Purchase instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
In their two different accounts of feeling-with the pain of another person, Sonia Kruks and Sara Ahmed both bring to light how bodies are not entirely stable entities but rather continuously receive their boundaries in interrelation with one another. Their descriptions lay bare a constitutive corporeal connectedness between bodies, described in the later writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in terms of intercorporeality. My concern in this chapter is precisely how to understand this constitutive corporeal bond in relation to the experience of pain. Drawing on the descriptions by Kruks and Ahmed, I explore the formative force of the affectivity of pain in establishing bodily boundaries and surfaces and raise questions about the grounds of our ability to feel-with the pain of others. In a first step I discuss Kruks’ focus on the role of body schema in feeling-with the pain of others and call attention to how body schemata are constituted and reinforced in relation to one another. I challenge Kruks’ contention that the receptivity to the pain of others is based on similarities in body schema so that we are more receptive to bodies of ‘our “own make”’ by asking how bodies materialise to make them recognisable as being or not being of one’s ‘own make.’ In a second step I turn to Ahmed’s account of how sensual experiences such as pain give us a sense of our skin as bodily surface. I discuss how attunement between bodies and capacity to feel-with the pain of others are formed through intercorporeal exchange as boundaries between bodies are established and reinforced as well as challenged and altered.