Michael Deere: "Life Always Outside: Silent Pain and Singular Bodies"

Pain cares nothing for me, and yet it is always mine. This is the central paradox of pain. It ties me intimately to my body while at the same time exposing me to an outside, a limit that exceeds the space of my body. I want to explore this curious sense of pain that at once defines me and escapes me in order to clarify new possibilities for identity and community. Tracing a path through Nietzsche, Bataille and Nancy, I argue that pain exposes us to our own finite singularity and that this exposure forms the basis for understanding community (and communication) across the space of a shared mortality.