pain

 all quotes from the cultural politics of emotion by sara ahmed

"it is through sensual experiences such as pain that we come to have a sense of our skin as a bodily surface, as something that keeps us apart from others, and as something that 'mediates' the relationship between internal or external, or inside and outside."

"it is through such painful encounters between this body and other objects, including other bodies, that 'surfaces' are felt as 'being there' in the first place. to be more precise the impression of a surface is an effect of such intensifications of feeling."

"the contradictory function of skin begins to make sense if we unlearn the assumption that the skin is simply already there, and begin to think of the skin as a surface that is felt only in the event of being 'impressed upon' in the encounters we have with others."

"i am not saying here that emotions are the same thing as sensations, but that the very intensity of perception often means a slide from one to another, as a slide that does follow as a sequence in time. hence whilst sensation and emotion are irreducible, they cannot simply be separated at the level of lived experience."

"[Drew Leder] suggests that 'the body is 'absent' only because it is perpetually outside itself, caught up in a multitude of involvements with other people'. and so, experiences of dysfunction (such as pain) become lived as a return to the body. . . pain can often lead to a body that turns in on itself, while pleasure tends to open up bodies to other bodies."

"i would not use the terms 'absent' and 'present' to describe embodiment as leder does, as it implies the possibility that bodies can simply appear or disappear. rather, i would point to the economic nature of intensification, and suggest that one is more or less aware of bodily surfaces depending on the range and intensities of bodily experiences. . . such intensity may impress upon the surfaces of bodies through negation: the surface is felt when something is felt 'against' it."