Among humans, there is a dependence upon the way pain is communicated to understand its experience, This is inadequate, full of potential for misunderstanding, under-treatment or over-treatment, invalidation and exclusion, cruelty and excesses of curiosity, but the rich repertoire of human pain concepts at least provides a basis for sharing and comprehension, where there is a will and, crucially, a common framework. I cannot feel your pain, but I might be able to arrive at a reasonable understanding of what your pain is like, based on the degree to which you communicated your pain to fall within my own experience of what pain is like, and according to the cultural framework we share. Then again, your pain might be so agonizing as to be beyond my ken. If you are from a difeent culture, or speak a different language to me, or - the historian's particular problem - if you are already long dead and speaking, as it were, through the archive, then I may struggle to understand.
knowing pain, rob boddice
