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How Does It Feel? : Making Sense of Pain
- 2011
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Samlingsverk (redaktörskap) (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- 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.
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| 2. |
- Johansson, Anna, et al.
(författare)
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Ridiculing suffering on YouTube : digital parodies of Emo style
- 2014
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Numerous YouTube videos represent and comment on self-injury, as evidenced by a search for this term which returns about 123 000 results (June 6, 2014). In previous studies, we have explored how suffering, embodiment and gender are performed in such personal videos through the use of digital technology and the YouTube platform in particular (Johansson 2013, Sternudd and Johansson forthcoming, Johansson & Sternudd in press). There is, however, one category of video clips that deserves further discussion: those that parody self-injury videos and ridicule people who self-injure through imitation and trivialization.In this paper, we analyse a number of such video parodies in order to demonstrate how humour is used to convey norms and ideas regarding mental suffering and gender. The existence of parodies implies that there is in fact a recognizable genre of self-injury videos to parody. Mockery, then, is not only aimed at self-injury as an embodied performance of mental suffering, but also at its digital display which tend to be ridiculed as mere attention-seeking. Furthermore, jokes often allude to gender stereotypes, revealing how performances of mental suffering are denigrated when associated with young femininity. Hence, we aim to discuss what these parodies tell us about the wider social and cultural context of suffering and about the relation between conceptualizations of suffering and constructions of community. To conclude, we suggest that humour in this context may be seen as transgressive insofar as it jokes about a controversial topic – suffering – and insofar as it is reappropriated or articulated by the very individuals who self-harm, but that the videos largely reinforce hegemonic ideas and the stigmatization of individuals who already suffer.
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| 3. |
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Painful conversations : making pain sens(e)ible
- 2014. - 1
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Samlingsverk (redaktörskap) (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Painful Conversations is an interdisciplinary anthology about pain. Problems concerning communicating and understanding pain are discussed with examples that stretches from literature to caretaking, from self-induced pain in religious and cultural contexts to problems of pain in theological and philosophical perspectives.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Sternudd, Hans T., 1955-
(författare)
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Communicating emotions and pain in the digital age
- 2013
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Photographs showing words cut into the skin constitute a special category of images of self-cutting that can be seen on the internet today. The words are often related to anger, suffering and agony. As I showed in a quantitative study that included over 6 000 six thousand self-injury images, cutting words into one’s own skin might be quite common among self-injurers. Approximately fifteen per cent of the images in the study depicted words mediated through lacerations, blood and scars.This material raises important questions about how emotions and feelings are experienced and manifested in different modes. Self-cutting involves both the visual perceived cuts and the nerve transmitted nociceptive experiences of pain. Manifestations that are perceivable by the cutter themselves. But what happens when these manifestations are photographed and published on worldwide networks, and thus become part of collective experiences? These experience are becoming the discursive tool for the production of and negotiations about the meaning of self-cutting (for instance in self-injury communities) in particular but also about the meaning of bodies, emotions and pain on a more general level.In this paper I will argue that the media involved in this production of meaning are integrated with each other – they are in symbiosis – to use Varga’s typology. This symbiosis becomes part of a unification of individual bodies that are interacting with each other and thus creating a collective body, with a collective understanding of its emotions and pains. During this process, the individual physical experience of a body is united with a virtual body experience through the interface of the screen. This is a unification that will probably reconstruct the meaning of emotion and pain in the digital age.
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| 6. |
- Sternudd, Hans T., 1955-
(författare)
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‘I like to see blood’ : visuality and self-cutting
- 2014
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Ingår i: Visual Studies. - : Taylor & Francis. - 1472-586X .- 1472-5878. ; 29:1, s. 14-29
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The sight of blood and wounds is described as crucial by individuals who self-injure, especially those who practise self-cutting. An understanding of the visual mode is therefore important to get a deeper understanding of why people choose to cut themselves. In this article, visual aspects of first-hand experiences of self-cutting are investigated. Cutting is understood as having a purpose and a function for people who injure themselves; it releases overwhelming feelings or communicates inner states to the individuals themselves and to others. Material was taken from autobiographical accounts describing cutting episodes and from photographs documenting the act. The analysis was carried out using content and discourse analytic methods. The results were interpreted using a discourse theoretical perspective. A semiotic model is proposed to understand the communicative meaning of the acts. An important finding is the role of conceptual metaphors such as ‘the-body-is-a-container’ and ‘feelings are fluid’, which make self-cutting a logical coping strategy. The role of blood as a central sign in the act was manifest in the written and visual accounts of the self-cutting experience. Blood was related to a wide range of meanings, such as realness and true self, and to feelings such as anger and sadness. Through the drawing of blood, feelings were expressed and understood. Blood was also often aestheticised and rearticulated by self-cutters who acknowledged their deviancy as a group in relation to a hegemonic culture. Concurrent themes were the verbal and visual articulations of cutting in a control discourse as a means to regain control or, sometimes, to give oneself up to an experience of chaos.
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| 7. |
- Sternudd, Hans T., 1955-
(författare)
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Images of Pain : Self-Injurers’ Reflections on Photos of Self-Injury
- 2011
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Ingår i: Pain. - Oxford, United Kingdom : Inter-Disciplinary Press. - 9781848880801 ; , s. 131-141
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Photographs of self-injury are a powerful tool for communicating pain (in a broadsense of the word, including ‘inner’, non-physical pain caused by inner turmoil or anxiety). They appear quite frequently on the internet and are often perceived as dangerously seductive and triggering, to the extent that websites can be forced to withdraw this kind of material. Publishing photos of self-injury can also lead toaccusations of attention- seeking, or competing to be the worst self-injurer. Anoften repeated feature of an inauthentic self-injurer is that s/he publishes photos of self-inflicted wounds and scars. As part of an ongoing study on visual representations of self-injury on the internet, members of a self-injury communitywere asked to reflect on the production, publication and consumption of photos of self-injury. Over fifty informants, both active and former self-injurers, participated in the survey. Prejudices about exposure to self-injury photos leading to anexacerbation of self-injury were not supported by the study. Positive effects, like alleviation, or being warned against the consequences of self-injury, were frequent,and the soothing effect of the photos was often emphasised. The answers from the survey create a complex picture, showing how self-injury photographs are part of a community culture; used to control the self-injurious behaviour, and as acommunicative device. The self-injury culture is reliant on expressions of empathy and solidarity. Pain is the basis of its communication, and, with the help of photographs, pain can be remembered, imagined and transferred. The self-injurycommunity revolves around a notion of shared experience of pain; photographs of self-injury are one of the resources for sharing and for building its communal ground.
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| 9. |
- Sternudd, Hans T., 1955-
(författare)
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Modes of pain : reflections on the self-injury experience
- 2014. - 1
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Ingår i: Painful conversations. - Oxford : Inter-Disciplinary Press. - 9781848881426 ; , s. 147-165
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- 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.
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| 10. |
- Sternudd, Hans T., 1955-
(författare)
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Photographs of self-injury : Production and reception in a group of self-injurers
- 2012
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Ingår i: Journal of Youth Studies. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1367-6261 .- 1469-9680. ; 15:4, s. 421-436
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Photographs of self-injury (SI) on the Internet, according to the literature and the wider media, spread and encourage self-destructive behaviour, although very little is known about these effects. A group of self-injurers was questioned about the reasons for producing and looking at photos of SI, and were asked about their reaction to exposure of them. The informants confirmed that the effects were alleviating rather than the opposite, and the production of the images was often related to notions about memory and proof. To publish them was apprehended as a way of sharing experiences with others and to give and/or receive help. Photographs of self-injuries were described as one resource of a SI community culture. Informants often emphasised that the outcome of watching these photos varies due to individual and situational differences. The results of the study are inconsistent with unfounded presumptions about photographs of SI, which are replaced with a nuanced and contradictory picture.
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