Cultural Ontology of the Self in Pain - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 8132226003 ISBN 13: 9788132226000

Publisher: Springer, 2015

Synopsis

The mainstream approach to the understanding of pain continues to be governed by the biomedical paradigm and the dualistic Cartesian ontology. This Volume brings together essays of scholars of literature, philosophy and history on the many enigmatic shades of pain-experience, mostly from an anti-Cartesian perspective of cultural ontology by scholars of literature, philosophy and history. A section of the essays is devoted to the socio-political dimensions of pain in the Indian context. The book offers a critical perspective on the reductive conceptions of pain and argue that non-substance ontology or cultural ontology supports a more humane and authentic understanding of pain.

The general ontological features of the self in pain and culturally imbued dimensions of pain-experience are, thus, brought together in a rare blend in this Volume. The essays dwell on the importance of understanding what cultural, social and political forces outside our control do to our pain-experience. They show why such understanding is necessary, both to humanely deal with pain, and to rectify erroneous approaches to pain-experience. They also explore the thoroughly ambivalent spaces between pain and pleasure, and the cathartic and productive dimensions of pain. The essays in this Volume investigate pain-experiences through the fresh lenses of history, gender, ethics, politics, death, illness, self-loss, torture, shame, dispossession and denial.

About this title

About the Author

Siby K. George is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India. He has previously been Lecturer of Philosophy at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Silchar, Assam. His area of research is twentieth-century Continental Philosophy, and he writes on development, suffering, community, environment, selfhood, agency and the like from a critical-phenomenological perspective, paying special attention to non-western contexts. He is author of Heidegger and Development in the Global South (2015, Springer; series: Contributions to Phenomenology, 82). On the theme of pain and illness, he has published “Wellness in Illness” (Samyukta: A Journal of Women’s Studies XI:2, 2011). His paper “The Affected Subject and the Case of Individuating Pain” is slated to be part of a forthcoming collection of essays on consciousness, subjectivity and otherness.

P. G. Jung is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), Mumbai, India. He is currently Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. His publications are largely in the field of philosophy of language, history of ideas, and the philosophy of everydayness. His two manuscripts, “Reading Wittgenstein all over again” and “Conceptualizing corruption through the corruptibilit

y of the self,” are currently being readied for publication.

About this edition

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 8132226003
• ISBN 13: 9788132226000
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 303
• Editor: George Siby K., Jung P.G.