The Case of Chronic Pain

This chapter discusses chronic pain and argues that pain ought to be understood as social. It takes interest in how the experience, expression, and language around pain instead frames it as an isolated experience. Chronic pain contrasted with acute pain is often doubted or rejected because it is not easily explainable and remedied in medical contexts. This, in conjunction with a view of pain as profane, results in the stigmatization of people who experience chronic pain. Those who experience chronic pain navigate damages to their credibility as well as a view of their lives as unlivable and awful.