Pain(ful) Subjects: Regulated Bodies in Medicine and Social Work

In: Qualitative social work: research and practice, Band 6, Heft 2, S. 197-212

Abstract

This article is about subjectivity in experiences of pain. I argue that the body is a site of political intervention and interpretation that shapes `reality' as tangible, substantial categories of cultural experience, including experiences of pain. To the degree that subjectivity works within disciplines of the body (medicine and social work), experiences of pain are significant processes from which an understanding of forms of resistance can begin. I conclude that ultimately what is at stake in understanding the subject through a cultural analysis of pain practices is the very experience of illness, the experience of our bodies. I work with a narrative sketched from my everyday practice as a social worker in an Emergency and Trauma department in an acute care hospital in Toronto, Canada. In doing so, I forefront arts-based methods as a form of qualitative research.