In the Eurowest, pain is discursively framed as something that elides discourse and is therefore outside language. In this framing, pain, as outside language, is given a social and a historical status, understood to be beyond human construction. Indeed played out in systems of belief and practice, pain acts as a medium for reciprocal relations with the metaphysical 'other' since it, too, is understood as originating and sharing a part in the 'authentic' or 'real', from which the metaphysical, and therefore truth, is understood to emerge. Understood as part of this domain, pain is linked to truth and therefore understood to be a means to truth - hence the use of torture to secure the truth. With this kind of discursive framing, this book works to make apparent the discursive framing of pain demonstrating its social and political imperatives and how these imperatives are aspects of constructing the 'other' and therefore the 'same'.

Darlene Juschka