What Does Disability Teach Us about Pain and Suffering?
Jason D. Whitt, PhD, MDiv, Senior Lecturer of Medical Humanities in the Honors Program, Baylor University
Disability theologian and activist Christopher Newell contends that it is important to recognize the “dangerous body” of the person with a disability. This body appears as a “form of terrorism” because it stands as a challenge contemporary cultural ideals of the embodied person that seeks to reject human frailty and finiteness. Disability appears to able-bodied eyes as a life that must be defined as suffering. Because of the limitations of body and/or mind, the disabled body is the antithesis of the life of freedom and self-determination that is imagined to be the purview of “normal” bodies. To this degree, then, such a life marked by the limitations of disability cannot possibly be good and so likewise must not be a life worth living.
Even more for the physician, the disabled body presents itself as the dangerous other bearing suffering in its very existence, suffering that, in most cases, cannot be fixed. For medicine that aims at cure or healing—often understood as the alleviation of suffering—then the disabled body represents a constant reminder of the limits of the practice. What is to be done with a body that refuses all efforts at cure?
In this presentation, I will argue that the disabled body as a locus of pain and suffering—that these are very real aspects of life with a disability for many people cannot be ignored—offers a way of moving beyond the limits of biotechnological means of alleviating pain and its accompanying suffering.
The presentation will explore the ways in which the “dangerous body” of disability stands counter to cultural assumptions of the ideal of health that is deemed necessary for a good life. The vulnerability of these bodies that often bear pain exist not as “other” over against normal bodies, but are reminders of the essential vulnerability that marks all human life. Further, these bodies can also affirm the full dignity of a life lived in vulnerability and dependence. For many, it is the imagined loss of dignity that is the source of great fear in the face of sustained, disabling pain.
Most importantly, reflection on disabled bodies reveals in their pain and vulnerability the necessity of community to sustain the suffering individual. This is the response of faith that has marked religious communities at least from the moment Job’s friends sat with him in his distress. Following the work of Hauerwas, I will argue that it is the presence of a sustaining community that allows the individual to bear pain and suffering. Likewise, rather than seeking an explanation for disability (particularly in cases of genetic origin), the presence of friends allows both the individual and her friends to redefine values and discover goods they might not otherwise have known through the suffering.
Even more for the physician, the disabled body presents itself as the dangerous other bearing suffering in its very existence, suffering that, in most cases, cannot be fixed. For medicine that aims at cure or healing—often understood as the alleviation of suffering—then the disabled body represents a constant reminder of the limits of the practice. What is to be done with a body that refuses all efforts at cure?
In this presentation, I will argue that the disabled body as a locus of pain and suffering—that these are very real aspects of life with a disability for many people cannot be ignored—offers a way of moving beyond the limits of biotechnological means of alleviating pain and its accompanying suffering.
The presentation will explore the ways in which the “dangerous body” of disability stands counter to cultural assumptions of the ideal of health that is deemed necessary for a good life. The vulnerability of these bodies that often bear pain exist not as “other” over against normal bodies, but are reminders of the essential vulnerability that marks all human life. Further, these bodies can also affirm the full dignity of a life lived in vulnerability and dependence. For many, it is the imagined loss of dignity that is the source of great fear in the face of sustained, disabling pain.
Most importantly, reflection on disabled bodies reveals in their pain and vulnerability the necessity of community to sustain the suffering individual. This is the response of faith that has marked religious communities at least from the moment Job’s friends sat with him in his distress. Following the work of Hauerwas, I will argue that it is the presence of a sustaining community that allows the individual to bear pain and suffering. Likewise, rather than seeking an explanation for disability (particularly in cases of genetic origin), the presence of friends allows both the individual and her friends to redefine values and discover goods they might not otherwise have known through the suffering.