Medical mission and the interpretation of pain
pp. 269-283
in: George, P. G. Jung (eds), Cultural ontology of the self in pain, Berlin, Springer, 2016Abstract
It is at the intersection of the corporeal experience and the cultural interpretation of pain, that slippery tenuous site where knowing and being are constantly confronting and dismantling each other, that new cultural recognitions of pain are produced as well as inscribed on bodies. These new recognitions are simultaneously personal as well as social. They are historically specific and culturally rooted and they restructure existing cultural practices of the body. Very often, such transformations have taken place in the context of interactions and confrontations between people of different cultures, religions, and nations. In this chapter is attempted a "cultural ontology of pain" through the exploration of a historically specific recognition of pain that emerged in the context of the confrontation of European Protestantism with the indigenous faith traditions of India.