Jessica E Dyer

A collection of ten related essays that explore themes of identity and pain. The pieces examine, through theory and personal narrative, the invisibility of experience and the pain of that invisibility. The first essay looks at the inadequacy of the ways in which we measure pain. These scales seem only to enhance the individualism of pain and, if pain cannot be shared, it is difficult to see how it can be discussed. Using this as a starting point, following essays ask, what does it mean to be a female body in pain? The ‘wounded woman’ is scrutinised. Why are we still attached to the clichés of the melodramatic woman and what purpose might she serve? The fragile consumptive heroine is a character still used to make female pain easy to ignore. Race is an important question that is returned to throughout; how we are raced and who decides on these classifications is central to the discussions. This collection of essays asks what we miss when we assume we know someone through their appearance alone. Categorisation of much of our lives is, it would appear, inescapable. Why do we continue to uphold these labels when they do not express the complicated entangled lives we lead? Who are these categories failing? Pain exists in the historical burdens our skins have absorbed; pain does not have to be physical. Placed next to each other the autonomous essays build up to produce a body. A body that is broken. A body that is in pain. A body that is wounded but continues to live.