This volume represents a multi-disciplinary investigation of the puzzle of pain. The concept of pain is immensely broad, encompassing psychological, physical and existential suffering; it enters into many areas of personal life and can acquire deep personal meanings and be expressed in a myriad of ways. At the same time, the ways in which we think of pain are influenced by collective understandings which are historically situated, embedded as they are, at any given time, in mutual engagements that result from shared stories of suffering. Pain both challenges and changes attention, and daily life must be adapted to accommodate it. The communication of pain is a complex nested relationship where a great deal can be at stake; therefore meanings are constructed, often in order that the dread of uncertainty may be bypassed. In this process, the actual nature of the pain and the attendant suffering are often obscured. The body of scholarly work presented in this volume has contributed to our understanding of pain-in-context through incisive studies of a variety of exigencies of life where pain and suffering occur, and where personal and collective suffering are intertwined. Our pervasive anxiety about suffering is grounded in its enormous complexity and in the intricate connections that exist between the vicissitudes of pain and our responses to it. Pain is ambiguous, sometimes even mysterious; it is anxiety-provoking and disruptive, and yet we can also learn from it. Sadly, we inflict it, too, intentionally or in the course of actions directed toward other aims. The contributors to this volume address a variety of these intricate issues, though not always in a conclusive way. Pain remains enigmatic, elusive and endlessly fascinating, just like human existence itself.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Angela Tumini and Mira Crouch PART I The Body in Pain Who is Able to Feel Pain? A Cartesian Attack on the Bete-Machine Anik Waldow Shooting Pains: Addressing Illness-Related Pain through Video Autobiography Broderick Fox A Framework for Analysing Cultural Responses to Pain Shona Hill An Uncertain Anodyne: Making Sense of Pain through Mesmerism in the Nineteenth-Century Elizabeth Todd PART II Pain, Desire, Identity The Discourse of Cutting: Regaining Control and Meaning Making Hans T. Sternudd Pain as Pleasure: Tough Girls' Love in Fan Fiction Malin Isaksson Dancing in Other's Shoes: Between Pain and Pleasure Daria Radchenko PART III Stories of Pain and Suffering Painstaking Pain: Alice McDermott's Child of My Heart Hoda Khallaf Eros and Thanatos: The Murderous Struggle of Pain and Desire in Gabriele D'Annunzio's Triumph of Death and in Lars von Trier's Antichrist Angela Tumini The (Swedish) Zombie and the State of the Welfare State: Pain and Hope in John Ajvide Lindqvist's Handling the Undead Katarina Gregersdotter Overcoming the Abject through Proxy in Flanagan's The Sound of One Hand Clapping Jane Fernandez Audiences and Pain Narrative: The Indonesian Audiences' Reception of Listen to Our Voice and Operation Fine Girl Kurniawan Saputro Notes on Contributors