Introduction

Cultural ontology of the self in pain

George

P. G. Jung

pp. 1-21

in: George, P. G. Jung (eds), Cultural ontology of the self in pain, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

The term "cultural ontology" evokes the sense that the social, political, religious and historical narratives and other cultural forces that are at play within the world one inherits exercise a sculpting power that shapes one's self, and this power is greater than the power that one has over them. The self thus formed is not an unchangeable substance but a non-substantial way of being or relating meaningfully to the world. The experience of pain is not an accidental element in the way of being of the self but is constitutive of the formation and being of the self. The process of meaning-making is intrinsically fraught with pain. Pain is at once aversive and necessary. This introductory chapter outlines the 13 other chapters of the book from the perspective of the cultural ontology of the self in pain, dividing them into three groups. The first set of essays deals with the various dimensions of the ontology of the self in pain; the second with the ethical, political and cultural angles, consequences and approaches to pain-experience; and the third with certain concrete contexts of the self in pain with reference to Indian social and political life.