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Obdurate Pains, Transient Intensities: Affect and the Chronically Pained Body

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  • David Bissell

    (School of Environment and Technology, University of Brighton, Cockcroft Building, Lewes Road, Brighton BN2 4GJ, England)

Abstract

In contrast to other discourse-centric explorations, I rethink the embodied experience of chronic pain through an affective ontology. Drawing on intensity, as a way of coming to know the qualitative experiential dimension of affect as diminished or heightened, I explore some of the complex relationships between intensity, desirability, and intentionality that cohere around pained bodies. In contrast to transient pain, chronic pain is presented as an undesirable affective intensity that has no recourse to intentionality and meaning but territorialises the body in ways that prevent other intensities from taking hold. Through an encounter with a pain-management programme, I explore a number of strategies for deterritorialising the chronically pained body in order to open it up to more desirable intensities. I argue that ultimately it is the progressive vulnerability and openness that deterritorialisation promises that is the key to becoming otherwise.

Suggested Citation

  • David Bissell, 2009. "Obdurate Pains, Transient Intensities: Affect and the Chronically Pained Body," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 41(4), pages 911-928, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:41:y:2009:i:4:p:911-928
    DOI: 10.1068/a40309
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    Cited by:

    1. Boyle, Louise E., 2019. "The (un)habitual geographies of Social Anxiety Disorder," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 231(C), pages 31-37.
    2. Budd, Lucy C.S., 2011. "On being aeromobile: airline passengers and the affective experiences of flight," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 1010-1016.
    3. Jeffries, Jayne M., 2018. "Negotiating acquired spinal conditions: Recovery with/in bodily materiality and fluids," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 61-69.
    4. Andrews, Gavin J. & Duff, Cameron, 2019. "Matter beginning to matter: On posthumanist understandings of the vital emergence of health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 226(C), pages 123-134.
    5. Andrews, Gavin J., 2019. "Spinning, hurting, still, afraid: Living life spaces with Type I Chiari Malformation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 231(C), pages 13-21.

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