Strick - American Dolorologies: Pain, Sentimentalism, Biopolitics

AMERICAN DOLOROLOGIES

AMERICAN DOLOROLOGIES

Pain, Sentimentalism, Biopolitics

SIMON STRICK

S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS

Published by
S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS , A LBANY

2014 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Strick, Simon, 1974

American dolorologies : pain, sentimentalism, biopolitics / Simon Strick.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4384-5021-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. PainSocial aspectsUnited States. 2. SufferingSocial aspectsUnited States. 3. United StatesCivilization. 4. Sentimentalism. I. Title.

BJ1409.S85 2014
306.4dc23

2013014434

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE
What Is Dolorology?

CHAPTER TWO
Sublime Pain and the Subject of Sentimentalism

CHAPTER THREE
Anesthesia, Birthpain, and Civilization

CHAPTER FOUR
Picturing Racial Pain

CHAPTER FIVE
Late Modern Pain

ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing is one of the few forms of self-abuse in which a helping hand is sometimes necessary, says mystery novelist Walter Satterthwait. My affinity, thankfulness, and love go to the many, many helping hands, eyes, minds, and institutions who were instrumental in the shaping, refining, and getting done of this book.

I thank the German funding system for young scholars and the Graduate Program Gender as a Category of Knowledge at Humboldt University Berlin for their generous financial support during the years of writing. The American Studies Department at Humboldt University shaped me academically and intellectually and my thanks go out to the splendid colleagues I worked with there: Dorothea Lbbermann, Eva Boesenberg, Martin Klepper, Klaus Milich, Reinhard Isensee, Renate Ulbrich, and Suncica Klaas. The graduate program Gender as a Category of Knowledge was a wonderful and inspiring place to develop concepts, theories, and methodologies and I thank all the people I met there. Special credit goes to Christina von Braun, Volker Hess and Viola Beckmann. Elahe Haschemi-Yekani, Beatrice Michaelis, Maja Figge, Sven Glawion, Konstanze Hanitzsch, Jana Husmann, Daniela Hrazan, Claudia Brunner, Anson Koch-Rein, Wibke Straube, Julia Roth, and many more helped me with insightful commentary and fruitful suggestions.

Excellent thanks and endless gratitude to the magnificent and awe-inspiring spirit and mind of Gabriele Dietze who as supervisor, discussion partner, and general councellor on all things mundane and academic was instrumental in guiding this project, and myself.

Beth Bjorklund, Claire Raymond, Susan Fraiman, Jennifer Wicke, and Jennifer Ray Greeson were wonderful colleagues at UVA and critically provided support and advice during the completion and publishing of this book. Thanks also to audiences and colleagues wherever, who listened to the seldom-conclusive ideas and arguments that eventually added up to this text. My thanks to the many people in Charlottesville, Dublin, Wien, Lausanne, Bremen, Weimar, and Berlin.

My gratitude goes to the many people who provided spaces to live and work, and offered patience and support: WG Blinkenlichten, Gaby Dietze, and Michael Lattek in Berlin, Jacqueline Burkhardt and Thierry in Banyuls-Sur-Mer, and the wonderful Harbaugh family in Cville for shelter and storm. I greatly thank my family and friends for supporting me and enjoying the various stages of success with me. Carsten Junker deserves special mention for unexpected lessons about friendship.

Susann Neuenfeldts personality, mind, work, and heart can be felt everywhere in this book. I express my gratitude and love to your wonderful presence, it tempts me in and drives me far away.

This book is dedicated to the memory of Gnter H. Lenz.

ONE

WHAT IS DOLOROLOGY?

Who is embodied, and how, and what is served by the sensual turn?

Lauren Berlant, Critical Inquiry, Affirmative Culture

In October 1852, one of the chief medical authorities in the emerging field of clinical obstetrics, Dr. James Young Simpson, wrote a ferocious letter to his London colleague Dr. Henry Ramsbotham. Simpson, the first medical professional to administer anesthetic agents in childbirth, made a comparison between the agonies of labor pain and those of corporeal punishment of slaves in order to convince his doubtful critic of the benefits of etherization. His comparative argument elucidates how pain in marginal bodies took on social and political meanings in the nineteenth century: