Modes of pain : reflections on the self-injury experience

• Answers from a group of fifty self-injurers active in an internet community to a questionnaire addressing issues about photographs of self-injury raised questions about how pain is communicated and takes part in constituting individuals. A situated knowledge reflecting a first-hand experience of self-injury experience is acknowledged in this study. The results from the questionnaire did not confirm assumptions that being exposed to or producing photographs of self-injury is harmful. Self-injury photos were inscribed in discourses that emphasised both negative and positive aspects, with both triggering and soothing outcomes. Articulations in control and sharing discourses were frequent. With the help of discourse and multimodality theories, self-injury photos were defined as one of several modes to articulate pain: aim that was not be understood as a physical pain, but as a life-threatening chaos that needed to be controlled by language. Communities for self-injurers provide many opportunities for self-injurers to express and communicate pain in different genres and modes. Self-injurers’ activities are seen in the light of a philosophy that recognises pain as a constitutional force for subjects. The discourse theoretical approach shows that the skin can be seen as the arena where ‘inner‘ and ‘outer‘ experiences are interpreted through language and also constitute the subject. Self-injury experiences are concluded to be expressions of an individual who resists destructive forces of pain that threaten his/her existence by marking the skin and drawing contours on the place where the individual is established, in an attempt to become.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Pain

Self-injury

Photographs of self-injury

Self-injury Community

Multimodality

Discourse

Situated knowledge

Humaniora

Humanities

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kap (ämneskategori)