Chicana Ways - Aletta

AnyBody's Concerns 6(2003)
they have to face is the rapidly increasing spread of images
of violence in modern and postmodern culture and especially
the media and the fact that this habituates people to
scenarios of pain and suffering. With regard to performances
such as Orlan's theatrical operations, the question arises,
therefore, whether they do not run the danger of losing their
sensational appeal, especially if one takes into account that
live broadcasts of plastic surgery have recently become a
popular TV format on the US channel ABC.
Languages and Images of Pain
27 That intersubjective communicability of pain is a
problematic issue has been Elaine Scarry's thesis and
argumentative point of departure. Another, related question is
how pain makes itself felt, how it figures as a sensation.
Ernst Pöppel has analysed the interplay of pain and pleasure
in human experience from a predominantly anthropological point
of view and has come to the conclusion that the threshold of
pain assessment ("Bewertungsschwelle") is an individually but
above all culturally variable dimension (10). He
differentiates between a minimal intensity of stimulus on the
one hand, at which pain is perceptible as such and which seems
to be universal among humankind (239), and a variable
tolerance level of pain on the other hand. An interesting
concrete example he cites is birth pains, which in Western
civilizations seem to be more negatively charged and result in
a comparatively low level of tolerance among Western women
http://www.genderforum.uni-koeln.de/anybody/gutenberg.html (31 van 60)31-3-2005 18:21:57