The Body in Pain:
Wyschogrod, Edith
tion in the pre-Reformation era than is and action in the world - together. Of social evil invite not only the evangelical usual in Protestant works on social course Catholic...
...What motivates the victor's power of enforcement then is that human sentience can be objectified torture is the power that physical pain the one factor differentiating war from in language and physical objects and, as possesses to confer its own "incontesta- other contests is missing...
...Nietzsche's words, "is soaked in blood is felt, the desire to move "out and away The section of her work that I find thoroughly and for a long time...
...power...
...This otherwise be inflicted upon sentient...
...The study then concludes by exroots of that community...
...Capital, Scarry maintains, ality of the very thing it has itself objec- context in which bodies would remain is an "elaborate retracing of the path tified by a perceptual shift which con- intact...
...68¢, three graven images and so-called "passover...
...She teaches in the PO Box 3157, Morganton, NC 28655neatly staked out tenets of Christian philosophy department at Queens College 3151...
...While a brief book of this sort, tism, nationalism, political ideology, study will not only provide useful text surveying such widely divergent present and economic utopianism as the new de- and adult discussion material, but will communities and time periods is neces- mons facing the churches in the latter half also engender further theological and hissarily quite sketchy, it is remarkable how of the twentieth century...
...M. Scott Peck, October BEYOND ANGER: On Being a Feminist in the gist of the entire book...
...tors to the potential for common witness agenda may also explain the variety of Underlying the sections on war and Commonweal: 506 torture is the contention that the difficulty fore . . . the balance of power had been Judeo-Christian structure of belief...
...Torture, she argues, language...
...supportive reminder to those who have Self-Improvement gone through one or more of the aware- Commonweal welcomes letters on subjects treated in its pages...
...Citing Clausewitz, merely subjective...
...lays out in some detail the contemporary The Bible and Marx receive extended challenges and the Catholic, World THIS book has a single subject, pain...
...Stull, Institute for Christian Studies, REVIEWERS Church of the Redeemer, 222 S. Palm The eighty-seven pages of text which ROBERT OCHS, S.J., is a researcher and writAve., Sarasota, Fla...
...denounce graven images on the pression are the only ones who are capa- most powerful forces of change and conbasis that they are made things, fictions, ble through their active, redemptive suf- tinuity are pitted against one another...
...Fenelon: Spiritual Counsel...
...The two form an inner psy- Testament, especially the Gospels, reactual instability is often the issue...
...like de have never had...
...To the counterar- object-laden but without sentience...
...I doubt that Osiek believes this, but In Brief she doesn't guard against the reader's "Building Genuine Community...
...Write ness stages Osiek describes...
...chance of being published...
...Letters of not more than Exciting self-improvement books...
...Thus in commenting on gra- sage: the cross that precedes resurrec- leadership by certain strategically placed ven images, she mentions "the large tion...
...And the author of God Is More Present Than You not merely by the audience she specifi- Think and The Death in Every Now...
...conclusion that until now, saintly excep- Write: Brandsma Office, PO Box 65, Dations aside, women have not been capa- rien, IL°60559-5341...
...tions - and distortions...
...the U.S.A...
...I suspect Karl Barth, Leslie Newbi- ceptual structure, this transformation, Ms...
...chological "loop" which is given ex- counts Christ's healing acts, an emphasis Example: Stalin's perception of potential terior expression in work, a word that, that derives from the fact that now God is treachery...
...Commonweal: 510...
...tian Scripture and in the writings of Karl leaders has yet to be received by the grass- Scarry's style...
...parts: the first considers the structure of World Evangelical Fellowship through While the book is phenomenological unmaking exemplified in torture and the 1970s and 1980s will be a revelation in method, descriptive rather than pre- war...
...When pain is expressed in com- duced to support it, but also because of onstration of the convergences is master- municable form, when it acquires con- the dizzying number of subtheses that ful...
...The successful articulation of victor to settle controversial issues...
...mation of strength...
...RATES: 75¢ a word, one time...
...The hurt of millions of dam- for Marx, the made world is the projected produces pain in the body of the victim aged bodies is made invisible and is "re- body of human beings, so much so that it and in doing so renders pain visible...
...FB, 1818 N. Washtenaw, Chicago, IL Osiek deals seriously with anger, dis- 60647...
...His succinct but torical research in the line of the one can be introduced to such wide vari- careful treatment of these categories of methodology it uses...
...Main expressing physical pain leads to seri- seriously altered...
...Satisfaction Guaranteed...
...Classified payable artifacts," salvific objects in which God overstates the oppression of women in with order...
...Pain, For all Scarry's sensitivity to both parts the regime's power is so contestable to like seeing or feeling, is a kind of senti- of the Bible, in the end she offers what begin with that torture is used...
...once objectified, easy to misappropriate, pacity to resolve disputes, does not exist...
...Not by giving voice to the experi- sues, freedom, justice, and the like...
...Pain supercessionist approach: the Hebrew gument that stable as well as unstable can only become an intentional state, one Bible is an account of both God's crearegimes have resorted to torture, Scarry that has objects, by hitching itself to the tive and wounding acts while the New would reply that perceived rather than imagination...
...But from the body" is pressing...
...The book's difgin, and other theological voices shaping contends Ms...
...Of social evil invite not only the evangelical usual in Protestant works on social course Catholic scholars favorable to lib- reader, but any serious Christian to evalethics...
...slips should not veil the book's impor- sacrifice, is what women end up with, in Booklet tance...
...In Western culture, ble: "Go from my sight to the eternal fire she contends that even at war's end she argues, creation has been given its that is ready for the devil and his "many treaties have been concluded be- major subjective expression in the angels...
...wholly illusory but, to the torturers...
...However, this sort of THE MAKING AND UNMAKING thesis: Amnesty International documents synthetic study can advance ecumenical OF THE WORLD on torture, transcripts of personal injury mutual understanding, as well as point trials, the works of Sophocles, Shakenew directions of convergence in social Elaine Scarry speare, Defoe, Sartre, and Mann, Kisethics...
...located," transferred to conceptual is- can substitute for the hurts that would How...
...of experiences it is largely inexpressible...
...However, the and original, brilliant but wild, and amining the structure of artifacts - or fact that there is so much common Chris- sometimes perverse in some of its more the potentially nondestructive exprestian ground should alert all of these sec- extreme assertions...
...singer on foreign policy, Clausewitz on temporary Models of Church and military strategy, medical literature on World" will be of most interest, since it Edith Wyschogrod pain, not to speak of the Bible and Marx...
...Scarry, can become the ficulties do not reflect quirks on the part the early years of the World Council foundation not only for human creation of the author, a professor of literature at would find it strange to discover an in- or "making" but also for an alienated the University of Pennsylvania, but reterpreter seeing a strong christological language of pain which is brought out in sult from the necessity of breaching the focus emerging at Uppsala (1968) and destroying or "deconstructing" both the disparate themes she is compelled to deepening at Nairobi (1975) as a result of bodies of human beings and the artifacts treat...
...This judgment is not likely to secure conpain and its language are often usurped It is the widespread perception that war sensus but should not blind one to the by or conflated with debased forms of has this outcome that often enables the originality of her interpretation of Marx...
...monthly in advance for more is materialized as song or physical thing...
...When pain detail, is a significant achievement...
...Commonweal: 508 Scarry also says that the God of the missing neither its motivating force for Hebrew Bible is unchanging because he changing what is unjust and debilitating, Correspondence has no body...
...Like Simone de Beauvoir's Sec- that not having achieved "a true sense of ond Sex, it is a driven work, part argu- self" they are unable to deny what they Free booklet: TITUS BRANDSMA: FRIAR ment, part exposition, part poetry...
...of God...
...Webber's last section on "Con- Oxford, $24.95, 385 pp...
...Indeed, it is the lack of Anabaptism, Lutheranism, and Cal- the evangelical world, which has not even-handed christocentrism and not the vinism, not only in their original time and produced this school of thought, one specific political positions of the reliplace, but also in their contemporary in- must expect it to sound alien and some- gious right which qualify it as nonterpretations, particularly where they times extreme...
...The state troubling is her analysis of belief, and of torture is not, as for Nietzsche, an affir- most unlike pain, then, is imagining - the Judeo-Christian account of creation...
...Through bodied voice...
...Be- The embodiment of the imagination's punishment in such Gospel texts as the cause the loser lacks the power to contest content is preferable to its remaining Son of Man's curse upon the uncharitathe war's outcome...
...It claims, and the maker cannot sell what he language of the regime...
...risks taken by the scriptural mind in al- "The women of the church who have The church in France has once again lowing a made thing, a fiction, God, to experienced the passive suffering of op- become the stage upon which some of the...
...Might it then be such, can be socialized...
...separate treatment...
...central thesis about the nature of pain in While Catholics and mainline Protes- For what language could correspond to constant view not only because of the tants will differ with particular evalua- its felt quality other than cries and eclectic character of the evidence adtions of their traditions, Webber's dem- groans...
...Another only un-Christian but unhealthy...
...To whatever extent this AGAINST FASCISM...
...Cassettes cally addresses: feminists who have de- BROTHERJEFFREY GROS, F.S.C., is director of the Commission on Faith and Order of the Spiritual Classics on Cassette - "Brother cided to remain in the church where they National Council of the Churches of Christ in Lawrence: The Practice of the Presence "have found both life and death...
...Treating Marx not as the critic of pain, which for Scarry refers objectified Scarry maintains further that war, like Western economic systems but as the attributes to their appropriate body torture, opens the possibility for translat- premier philosopher of the problem of zones, will, to the contrary, render such ing attributes of the body into another material creation, Scarry suggests that, misuse impossible...
...Council, Evangelical, and New Right re- Because pain is itself the most private I warn the reader to keep the book's sponses...
...K.S.S...
...30, 31, and November 1, 1986, Sarasota, the Church, by Carolyn Osiek, R.S.C.J...
...Because the at- leged singular attribute, the power of its Marx is, she remarks in passing, our tributes of pain are hard to objectify or, own enforcement and therefore the ca- major philosopher of material objects...
...But its expression as work, the sheer empty would consider such texts from the Hefrom this it does not follow, as conven- sentience that is pain finds social embod- brew Bible as Amos with its stress on tional wisdom holds, that the winner is in iment...
...Rather it is because which is nothing but its objects...
...Scarry develops...
...feminism owed to scholarship...
...and hence `lies.' As if the biblical text fering of being the instruments of Christ itself interpreted...
...The book is extraordinary Marx...
...The au- (Continued from page 482) difficulty is Scarry's treatment of God as thor refuses to get bogged down in the authority, as expressed through such himself an artifact, a fictional product of quicksand of today's debate on women's promising post-conciliar bodies as the the biblical imagination...
...Kennedy, Dept...
...It is also a (CUNY...
...to bring about the transformation and libThere are, - however, wonderful eration of that sinful aspect of the church Classified analyses in this' section of the difference for the sake of all its women and its men betweenn weapons and tools, between as well . . ." Osiek writes...
...9, convinced but curious, complete with the Mass Death (Yale...
...A Conconcluding it and being baffled, given ference Led by Dr...
...For information: The Rev...
...Pain, she argues, is an objectless state: it making and the antagonist of the body's Like Nietzsche, Scarry interprets tor- simply is...
...Interrogation does mean that if the outcome of war makes, private property becomes a proband confession provide the structure for were perceived correctly as not insuring lem for Marx...
...COMMONWEAL, 15 The difficulties and occasional factual Osiek implies that repression, not self- 'Dutch St., NYC 10038...
...ety so clearly and concisely...
...had to write" deserve to be read...
...Marx saw that ble reality" on the very forces that have possible (as William James had hoped) to human identity is grounded in the capacinflicted pain...
...Scarry's ence but without objects...
...Still, the 250 or 300 words naturally have a better for FREE brochure...
...compassion for the widow and the ora position to decide whatever issues were Scarry's account is a materialist one...
...tape, $9.95 postpaid, both EDITH WYSCHOGROD is the author of Spirit newly convinced, or never-to-be- in Ashes: Hegel, Heidegger, and Man-Made for $17.95...
...Certainly Protestant re-evaluation of the pre-Reformation period will have to continue on deeper levels...
...Robert Paulist Press, paper $4.95, 93 pp...
...Like the message: it is imperative for human be- pain to imagining, second, the relation of Roman Catholic bishops' teaching on ings to find non-destructive expressions the body's sentience to voice as that relaeconomics and peace, the best biblical for pain...
...Because material objects are an ing the pain to itself in the sense that the point that some wars are fought for justi- extension of the maker's body, she torturer forces the victim to speak the fiable reasons while others are not...
...This is the book's primary strength...
...Pain is the basis for both The Body in Pain is divided into two careful treatment of the discussions in the making and unmaking the world...
...64¢, six times...
...It is also the least liked of all hurts, which Scarry does in painstaking ture as an expression of power that, in states, "the most aversive...
...But God as one of the nor its power to overwhelm one's dramatis personae of the biblical drama spiritual life with a negativity that is not often exhibits changes of heart...
...The implicit moral sions of pain...
...the influence of liberation theology...
...God as a fiction...
...terms for the discussion of her subject...
...It is my hope that this book...
...book offers more...
...for Scarry, is a near equivalentfor both himself incarnate rather than a disemIn the case of war, Scarry argues, each "pain" and "created object...
...three times...
...But if this is the case terial self-expression, on the other hand, ous perceptual and political complica- it is difficult to justify war since its al- has been best understood by Karl Marx...
...one respect that could be misleading...
...evangelical, over against Catholic and converge or contrast with the thesis of the Webber identifies secularism, scien- conciliar voices...
...along which the reciprocity of artifice has verts the vision of suffering into the From the deconstruction of the world lost its way back to its human source...
...The book is a terse primer for the Each 60 min...
...Scary seems roles within the church, and re-examines National Bishops' Conference and the not to intend this as a present-day theory in light of the latest feminist scholarship Priests' Senate, in favor of the more perbut as itself the position of biblical self- what is at the heart of the Christian mes- sonal, highly visible, direct exercise of reflection...
...A more balanced analysis side attempts to out-injure the other...
...This may account for the tion is understood in Jewish and Chrisreflection of evangelical scholars and urgency of tone that characterizes Ms...
...The primary weakness is that Osiek times...
...The of civilization...
...To redescribe Marx as the philosopher of wholly convincing spectacle of power...
...imagination is older theologians referred to as the thesis is compelling...
...Post- Wracking more than the imagination Reformation Catholicism, with the exception of Vatican II and beyond, is yet THE BODY IN PAIN materials included in developing its to be assimilated...
...enced pain of the tortured but by consign- does not mean that Scarry misses the bodies...
...ble of the spiritual maturity available to Conference men...
...the second takes up making or creato many evangelicals as well as to those scriptive, there is no mistaking its moral tion by analyzing, .first, the relation of outside the evangelical orbit...
...He is 4263...
...Scarry turns to its mirror image, creation...
...33577, (813) 955biblical scholar Carolyn Osiek, RSCJ, er on spirituality living in California...
...Florida...
...The segment on the Reformation eration theology will find Webber's uate the present situation in the light of is helpful, because of its treatment of evaluation somewhat prejudicial, but to the Gospel...
...Torture "[falsifies] the re- find a moral equivalent for war, some ity to create...
...Auricle Productions, Dept...
...phan, while also showing the threat of alleged to spark the conflict...
...The story of a Beauvoir, Scarry sets radically new is true, such logic leads to the dubious Dachau martyr's resistance to the Nazis...
...figures like Cardinal Lustiger...
...For Scarry his key insight this reallocation of pain...
Vol. 113 • September 1986 • No. 16
