Aesthetic of Body in Pain

Centre for Arts, Humanities and Sciences (CAHS), acting on behalf of the University of
Debrecen CAHS
SENSIBILITY IN DISSECTION: AFFECT, AESTHETICS, AND THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BODY IN

PAIN
Author(s): Ildik Csengei
Source: Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (HJEAS), Vol. 9, No. 2, PHILIP
LARKIN, BRITISH STUDIES (Fall, 2003), pp. 155-180
Published by: Centre for Arts, Humanities and Sciences (CAHS), acting on behalf of the University of Debrecen
CAHS
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IN DISSECTION:
SENSIBILITY
AND THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
AFFECT,
AESTHETICS,
BODY IN PAIN
tijeris
Withoutall doubt, the tormentswhich we
may be made to suffer,are much greater
in theireffecton the body and mind,than
any pleasures which the most learned
voluptuary could suggest, or than the
liveliest imagination,and the most sound
and exquisitelysensible body could enjoy.
- EdmundBurke,A Philosophical
Enquiry
The notion of sensibility in various fields of eighteen-century
culture implies a belief in natural goodness, benevolence, compassion,
sympathy, and virtue, and it is often associated with a cult of feeling,
melancholy, distress, and refined emotionalism. In literaryand cultural
history, sensibility usually features as a widely used concept, a preexistent, all-pervasive cultural trend that filters into all areas of
eighteenth-centurylife. Scholars of the period, among them Janet Todd
and R. F. Brissenden, often attempt to describe eighteenth-century
sensibility as a strictlystructureddiscourse a readable, closed system of
as
referred
to
"the
meaning frequently
language of the heart" (Todd 77).
Critical writings on sensibility sometimes turn into manuals on reading
this language, trying to provide the right meanings for each item. For
example, this vocabulary contains elements with specific, period, and
context-related connotations (for example, debility, innocence,
heightened emotionalism, and floods of tears are natural and desirable for
persons of sensibility, both male and female). Words referringto bodily
manifestations (blushing, fainting, swooning, crying, mute gestures,
palpitations of the heart, handholding, etc.), and objects, body parts, or
other attributes(the letter,the face, certain pieces of clothing as readable
texts) also make a frequentappearance.
However, an eighteenth-century scientific text incidentally
referredto in Brissenden' s Virtue in Distress, a study on mostly literary
sentimentalism, might offer a possibility of rethinking the notion of a
readily assumed, all-pervasive concept of sensibility through a closer
focus on the eighteenth-centurybody, which my study will hereby
undertake. The body and its involvement in the emergence of affectivity,
I will argue, conceptualize sensibility in the process of its own
production, and not as an all-penetrating, already available discourse or
readable language.
The source of Brissenden' s reference is A
Dissertation on the Sensible and Irritable Parts of Animals (London,
1755) by Albrecht von Haller (1708-77), Swiss physiologist, poet, and
Hungarian JournalofEnglish and AmericanStudies 9.2. 2003. Copyright by
HJEAS. All rightsto reproductionin any formare reserved.

literary critic. Haller was, for his contemporaries, a well-known and

influential professor of anatomy and botany working in Gottingen. He
was famous for his animal experiments, and according to the literary
critic Brissenden, he "did much to provide the foundation for all
subsequent formulations of the concept of sensibility" (42). Von Haller' s
importance, from a medical perspective, lies in the attempt to give
empirical basis to everything that can be known about sensation and
motion in the body, and thereby to challenge false theoretical
assumptions that previously often resulted in the failure of human
medical treatment.Besides his experimental-empirical medical treatises
that testifyto his desire for scientific precision, he wrote several poems in
the wake of sensibility and was himself an ardent believer of God. The
experiments he made to inquire into the nature of feeling, I contend, open
up another direction in the way the concept of sensibility was understood
in the culture of the period, and which can be a productive dimension in
understanding other contexts (such as the eighteenth-centurynovel)
where the concept surfaces. It is this dimension of the meaning of the
concept of sensibility, observed in its production and inherentin its very
definition, in discourses that literary scholarship has considered less
"central" to its investigations and focus, that my study shall undertake to
further explore. Therefore this study is located at the margins of
sensibility, at its extremities where sensibility in the process of its
- is
more
hardly any
distinguishable from the most intense
emergence
experiences of pain, and the very moments where heightened feeling slips
into the lack of sensation.
Von Haller distinguishes between two phenomena in animate
bodies, namely, irritabilityand sensibility,4which he defines as follows:
I call thatpart of the humanbody irritable,which becomes
shorterupon being touched; very irritableif it contracts
upon a slight touch, and the contraryif a violent touch
contractsit but little.I call thata sensible partof the human
body, which being touched transmitsthe impressionof it to
the soul; and in brutesin whom the existenceof a soul is not
so clear, I call those parts sensible, the irritationof which
occasions evident signs of pain and disquiet in the animal.
On the contrary,I call that insensible, which being bunt,
tore,pricked,or cut till it is quite destroyed,occasions no
sign of pain nor convulsion, nor any sort of change in the
situation of the body. For it is very well known that an
animal, when it is in pain, endeavours to remove the part
thatsuffersfromthe cause thathurtsit; pulls back the leg if
it is hurt,shakes the skin if it is pricked,and gives other
evidentsigns by whichwe know it suffers.(4)
Since in his definition sensibility can be grasped by means of pain and
irritabilitythrough "evident signs of suffering,"mostly motion, he makes
experiments to determine which parts of the animal body are sensible and
156

irritable,and to examine how these phenomena operate. As in the case of

many contemporary physicians, his experiments practically consist in
dissecting animals alive torturingvarious parts of theirbodies by burning,
cutting, or lacerating them with differentinstruments. He outlines the
experiments as follows:
[. . .] since the beginningof the year 1751, 1 have examined
several differentways, a hundred and ninety animals, a
species of crueltyforwhichI feltsuch a reluctance,as could
to thebenefit
onlybe overcomeby thedesire of contributing
of mankind, and excused by that motive which induces
persons of the most humane temper,to eat every day the
fleshof harmlessanimals withoutany scruple.As in making
these experimentsI was obliged to tryseveral which were
useless, and to repeat others of them several times, to
communicateto the whole of themwould only be spinning
out this treatiseneedlessly; whereforeI shall confinemyself
to relate those only which are of real use, and are found
constantlytrue. (2)
Such an approach to sensibility might make one think about how it
relates to those notions it is not usually associated with- notions which it
distinguishes itself from or which it seems to exclude from itself such
as cruelty. Haller's example leads to the speculation that eighteenthcentury sensibility, with its highly valued notions of compassion, virtue,
benevolence, and transparencyof the body, may be based on a process of
definition that implies concepts and acts incompatible with accepted
definitions of sensibility. Cruelty, in this passage, gets its justification
from sensibility, and, conversely, sensibility is defined in relation to
cruelty.
However, this does not mean that sensibility should be understood
as an easily removable veil that can quickly reveal as its new and true
referentcontents that we would ratherkeep hidden. It would also be too
simplistic to say that sensibility is only another name for ideology. The
physiological context of sensibility draws attention to the existence of a
seemingly contradictory mode of definition that testifies to the
complexity of the trope of sensibility. It opens up furtherrealms where its
meaning has been dispersed. Also, by showing the interrelatedness of
sensibility, pain, and cruelty, it suggests that finding out more about the
nature of their relationship may lead to a different understanding of
sensibility as a supposedly readable, linguistically available construct.
Haller stresses the connection of pain and sensibility and
establishes a relationship between them that can be called signification,
where sensibility, the signified, can never be manifest in itself. It is a
hidden, internal phenomenon, both physiological and psychic (since in
humans the impression on the sensible part is transmittedto the soul).
Sensibility in Haller's system is signified by pain, another oblique
phenomenon that makes itself manifest through the animal's body:
157

pulling back the sore limb or shaking the skin, etc. What is not sensibility
then, namely pain- i.e., a type of affect, which is interpretedthrough
certain phenomena (such as motion) as its signs- is presented to point to
sensibility, the absent signified, the unreadable point of Haller's system
of signification. The stake of Haller's system is to gain access to this
point, which the text, by establishing a logical signifyingchain, assumes
to be possible. Pain (with its own complex system of signifiers, a whole
realm of differenttypes of bodily manifestations) is a medium that makes
it possible for sensibility to show something from itself- something that
surrounds the hidden point and makes the physician suspect its existence.
Haller's dissections can offer a case study on eighteenth-century
ways of reading and dealing with inaccessible afreets. My objective is to
find out about this not sensibility that is still related to sensibility, to see
how the texture of what is made manifest of the hidden internal quality is
constructed, and what the relationship is between the internal
phenomenon and the perceptible texture- a distinction created by the
experimenting physician. My analysis of not sensibility will offer a
critical examination of such a distinction together with the notion of
sensibility as an internal property already existing inside the body or
psyche that manifests its presence on the surface of the body. If the
internal phenomenon transformsitself into, expresses itself in a readable
text, one way of tracing theirrelationship can be finding out the means of
this transformation. On the other hand, it is also possible that the
perceptible phenomena of the body are simply misread by the physician
in terms of a linguistic structurethat points to an internal phenomenon as
a referent, artificially and secondarily constructed; therefore, paying
attention to points where signification does not seem to work properly
will also be undertaken as a possible method in the examination of such a
relation.
Since the manifestations of the assumed internal phenomenon are
acted out by the body, this research focuses on the body as it is made into
a site of signification. The body in such context functions as a means of
understanding something beyond it, as a medium that stands between the
interpreterand the phenomenon; a readable, verbal constructthat,though
it eludes language, is forced back into language, often by violence and
cruelty. This body, like Francis Barker's concept of the modern body- as
the object of a scientific gaze that does not see the body itself- is
banished from discourse, denied as a body, yet remains present as a
structured,organized object (Barker vii; 69).
Albrecht von Haller and a Painful Sensibility
Haller's dissertation, a scientific definition of sensibility and
irritability,begins with a gesture characteristic of the rhetoric of many
eighteenth-centurytexts: he renders his experiments significant from a
158

humanitarian perspective, since they will serve the benefit of mankind,

while displaying sensibility on the scientist's part by claiming
compassion for the victims. However, the expression of compassion and
philanthropy appears as if it was only a rhetorical gesture; the narrator
alludes to the position of the "man of feeling," but afterthat he slips into
a medical text that does not allow emotional response on the part of the
scientist. Despite paying tribute to philanthropy and admitting that the
method of research implies cruelty,he never again makes a reference to
any reluctance on his part to go on with the experiments. Moreover, even
when discursive elements appear in Haller's text that, by carrying
allusions to the rhetoric of a discourse which, by its nature, would elicit
affective response on the part of the viewer of agony, the expected
response does not appear. This happens when Haller cannot go on with
his experiments to determine the sensibility of the bones or the heart:
"The reason why I have not discovered [the sensibility of the heart]
myself is, that an animal whose thorax is opened is in such violent
torture,that it is hard to distinguish the effect of an additional slight
irritation" (28). The experiment has to be stopped, not because of any
manifest emotional response on the part of the physician, but for
technical reasons. Interestinglyenough, the sensibility of the heart, that
used to be thought of as the center of all sensation, cannot be proven by
forcingit to produce signs of its sensibility,thus remaining a blind spot in
Haller's narrative.
In Eighteenth-CenturySensibility and the Novel , Ann Jessie Van
Sant discusses the intermingling and mutual influence of various
discourses in the eighteenth century,where discourses of science contain
elements of the pathetic and sentimental, and, on the other hand, the
psychological, pathetic, and literarycontexts also borrow elements from
scientific, physiological discourses. The psychological language of
sensibility,claims Van Sant, fuses the long-standing language of the heart
and the language of the nervous system (9). Van Sant explains the
presence of the rhetorical and dramatic elements in scientific contexts by
the fact that in the eighteenth century, scientific writings have not yet
come to the point of establishing their credit by the exclusion of affective
discursive contexts. However, as the separation of discourses was
gradually taking place, scientists "refined their language to exclude
affectiveparticularity,"and that made "the underlying similaritybetween
scientific and rhetorical procedure more difficult to see" (58). This
revision of language included, for example, terms that are used as
metaphors in other contexts, such as "touching the soul," "heartstrings,"
"vibrations," which were originally physiological terms used in their
literal sense.
If it is a discursive strategy on the part of scientific texts to
distinguish themselves from other, "less scholarly" and more figurative
discourses by excluding affective elements from themselves, then at the
point of Haller's apology at the very beginning, the text fails to be a
159

scientific text, or it has not established its scientific nature by an act of

exclusion or repression, since the perspective is confessedly that of the
man of feeling and not of the objectifying gaze of the scientist. On the
other hand, if the opening speech act is an apology for the cruelty of the
experiments, it will again fail to achieve its goal, since, on the basis of
this one text the reader is tempted not to think of Haller as the benevolent
man of sensibility.
What makes it possible for this scientific text to reconcile the
sympathetic man of feeling of the beginning of Haller' s treatise with the
insensible agent who performs the experiments? It is difficultto decide
whether the appearance (and the furtherdisappearance) of the rhetoric of
sensibility in the scientific text contributes to the effacement on Haller' s
part of his sadistic pleasure in the other's suffering,or whether it points
to the effacement of his own masochistic sufferingfromthe repression of
his humane feelings during the experiments, and thus fromthe creation of
a strictly scientific text by the intended exclusion of any narrative of
suffering.If he is indeed a man of feeling (which he was taken to be by
his contemporaries), a repression of his own sentiment and compassion
is necessary to read a scene of sufferingregardless of suffering;he must
attemptto step outside the field where the rhetoricof sensibility operates.
Moreover, the role of the man of feeling already implies a masochistic
position where pain and pleasure are indistinguishable due to the
workings of sympathy. A scene of sufferingnecessarily induces pain in
the viewer through a sympathetic identification with the sufferer,but
sympathy, sharing, and alleviating the other's suffering by feeling
compassion also entails pleasure.
His excuse for doing the experiments is the "motive which
induces persons of the most humane temper, to eat every day the flesh of
harmless animals without any scruple." A reference to eating is made
with its implications of pleasure and consumption, which ironically
contrasts with the fact that it is presented in the context of serving the
benefit of mankind. It is seeking pleasure - by doing harm to the otherthat is realized in the scientific curiosity of dissection or in cutting the
other to pieces by eating it up with fork and knife. The sadistic pleasure
of Reason is achieved by the repeated acts of violence: by cutting open
and throwing away living bodies, while imposing a readable structureon
them, i.e., turningthem into Barthesian "readerly texts." However, the
sadistic impulse of seeking for pleasure in another's pain in Haller' s case
will also imply encountering and taking pleasure in one's own pain,
which explains the possible coexistence of the two divergent speaking
positions in the treatise, as the following paragraphs will also show.
Haller' s text, while it fails to recognize scenes of suffering as
stimuli that elicit emotional response, lets into itself tropes from the
scenery of torture.It thereby redefines the participants in the experiment
in terms of another discourse, an act that may be seen as a means of
obliterating the affective, rhetorical aspects the experiment would
160

involve. Haller himself uses the word "torture" in terms such as "cruel
torture"(18) or "violent torture"(28) that referto the states the dissected
animal is in. His method, dissection, lies in examining the reaction of
each individual body-part,which method breaks the body into fragments,
just as torturedoes.
Torturing the Other, however, is used here for healing the self.
Animal suffering, implemented for medical purposes, serves a
humanitarian aim. In various philosophical and medical contexts of the
period, the human being detaches himself fromanimalism and creates his
identity by the exclusion of what it does not consider as human.
However, identification with the animal on the part of the physician is
still necessary to make animal sufferingindicative of human suffering,so
that it can be used for purposes of healing the human. The body is
- therefore
curable and capable of suffering
capable of sensibility if it is
an animal body. The animal and the human, from this point of view,
possess the same capability for sensibility (or feeling pain). Haller' s
account of human(e) sensibility is thereforedependent on animalism, that
is, the very feature that humanity distinguishes itself from. The point of
identificationof the human with the animal in pain, the moment when the
channel for sympathy and compassion is created is, paradoxically, a
sadistic moment: it is only by tormentingthe other that he can experience
his own pain, suffering,and fear. Medicine becomes an instrumentof
torturein order to be able to functionas medicine.
In The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry interprets the structure of
torture and claims that during the act of torture the institutions of
civilization, such as medicine, law, or domestic objects, are alluded to,
but in a deconstructed form. The healing function or medicine is unmade
by turning doctors into actual agents of pain; torture inverses the
mechanism of the trial by using punishment to generate the evidence; or
it makes the protective domestic scenery into a torture chamber where
every object is a weapon that hurts the prisoner. Achievements of
civilization change their meaning in that they themselves turn into
weapons and into agents of the torturer, thus demonstrating that
civilization is being annihilated during the cruel act (41-42). In the
process of animal torture by dissection, however, the very nature of
medicine proves to be inherently deconstructive: it can be an agent of
civilization only if it is cruel to civilization's Other. It is not that torture
deconstructs medicine as an achievement of civilization, but that this
achievement, by definition an agent of serving the benefit of human
beings, is already on the side of violence.
The stake of the discourse of tortureis similar to Haller' s aim in
his experiments: to bring something imperceptible, like pain or
sensibility, to the field of perception. This, in both cases, happens by
means of building up systems of signification that are supposed to reveal
something of the undecipherable internal phenomenon. Haller' s
experiments, by dividing the body into sensible and irritable parts that do
161

not always overlap, turn the body into a signifying system. Pain, and
thereforesensibility,is present in the organ if, on its violent irritation,the
animal shows signs of pain, usually by bodily motion: "For it is very well
known that an animal, when it is in pain, endeavours to remove the part
that suffers from the cause that hurts it; pulls back the leg if it is hurt,
shakes the skin if it is pricked, and gives other evident signs by which we
know it suffers" (Haller 4). Accordingly, if there is no bodily
manifestation,pain and sensibility are denied to the organ by Haller. It is
on this basis that he concludes that the lung, liver, tendons, and kidneys
are without sensation, since "I have irritated them, thrust a knife into
them, and cut them to pieces, without the animal seeming to feel any
pain" (28).
Von Haller' s mistake, on the one hand, lies in making pain
referential by building up a signifying chain, which unquestionably
interpretsbodily reactions to stimuli as signifiers of pain, which in itself
is a signifier of an internal quality, namely, sensibility. However, in
Haller' s system there are possibilities for misinterpretation in
presupposing unequivocal signification. The biased nature of his
enterprise is also emphasized by the fact that pleasurable sensations are
excluded from his definition of sensibility, since they cannot be made
visible by his experiments. The only pleasure - that of the scientistseems to be of a sadistic or a masochistic nature. It arises from pain and
presents itself in the discourse in spite of the author's effortsto eliminate
it.
Making pain signify is problematic in itself. In Elaine Scarry's
approach, a crucial feature of pain is its unsharability, which is
guaranteed by pain's resistance to language. For the person in pain,
claims Scarry, having pain means having certainty,while for the person
not in pain the other's pain is the model of what it is to have doubt.
Physical pain resists and destroys language, bringing one back to a state
anterior to language (4). Pain, according to this theory,is differentfrom
other interior states of consciousness, since these other states are usually
accompanied by objects in the external world: having feelings for
somebody or something moves the individual beyond the boundaries of
his/her body. Physical pain, however, has no referential content;
therefore,it resists objectification in language. Thus, inventing linguistic
structures for pain involves an attempt to reverse the de-objectifying
work of pain (5-6).
Since pain is inexpressible, making it into a language - or rather,
making up a language that points to this unreadable internal
phenomenon- must necessarily be about something else; that is, it can
only speak in allegories. Scarry calls this language about pain that is not
pain "language of agency" (13), which implies communicating and
categorizing pain through associating it with the instruments that can
cause it, which, because they have qualities like length or shape, can help
make pain sharable by the one not in pain. This happens when one tries to
162

specify the nature of pain one feels and the only way to do it is to
characterize it throughthe instrumentthat might cause a certain feeling,
such as cutting pain or burning pain - giving it shape, length, and color
(15). However, such a language of agency can never be the language of
pain itself, since, as Scarry points out, it spatially separates what is
conceived as pain (by means of language) from the body. The act of
signification "permits a break in the identification of the referent" and
entails a "misidentification of the thing to which the attributesbelong,"
thus shifting the viewer's sense of reality from pain to instrument,
creating doubt concerning the other's pain (13-17; 27). And it is the
sadistic potential underlying in this break that the structure of torture
takes advantage of by making it possible to confer the reality of pain onto
something else, such as the torturer'spower (28).
Haller's system, a readable structureof the affective phenomena
of pain and sensibility, necessarily breaks up where he turns pain into a
signifier.This makes other signifyingsystems constructive of the body of
scientific experimentation filterinto the system- or rather,emerge from
within the breaches of Haller's text, such as the scene of sufferingand
compassion, the spectacular body of torture,or the captive in the scene of
war. Such structures might take shape as actual narratives, voices that
address and challenge Haller's discourse making furthercomments on the
technique of dissection and its relationship with affects and sensibility.
Robert Whytt and an Aesthetics of Pain
One such narrative response to Haller's text is offered by Robert
Whytt, Edinburgh physiologist (1714-66) in his Physiological Essays
-(1761). The doubt concerning the other's pain that underlies Haller's
experiments seems to be avoided in Whytt's critique of Haller. Whytt
reads the blind spots of Haller's Dissertation and finds some of those
points where his signifying system can be undermined. One of these
places is Haller's denying pain (or any sensation) where there are no
manifest and easily interpretable signifiers. While in Haller the bodily
symptom is basically structured as a metaphor (the symptom as the
vehicle for sensation), in Whytt's text one can observe a metonymic
chain in the way the relationship between motion and feeling is imagined.
Haller strictlyseparates sensibility from irritability,and he claims that
irritabilityis the characteristic of the bodily substance, and its contractive
force operates regardless of feeling, even afterdeath. However, feeling as
pain can be proved to be present, according to Haller, when motion as its
sign can be observed. Whyttdoes not deny sensation and the presence of
the nerves to any part of the body and claims the interrelatedness of
sensibility and irritability. Irritability of any part depends on its
sensibility. Motion, therefore,is not due to an innate quality within the
matter; it cannot proceed from "the unknown properties of their
163

insensible glue" (215) as Haller claims, but it is a consequence of an

uneasy feeling in the irritated part in order to lessen the unpleasant
sensation. Motion is dependent on feeling (Whytt 214-15); the cause of
motion is the omnipresent sensation. However, even if the presence of
feeling is not doubted, Whytt bases his claim on his experiments with
animals, usually frogs,pigeons, and tortoises, whose bodies he repeatedly
mutilates and torments to death by examining why and how long they
move after taking out their brain or heart, or cutting off one part of the
body and irritatingthe rest. It is also worth mentioning that his treatise
takes into consideration his experiences gathered while examining human
patients as well, so his system makes the intermingling of human and
animal sufferingmore explicit. The result is a signifying system of the
body where motion is always a sign of pain (sensation), but pain does not
always produce motion; the capacity for feeling is present everywhere,
without necessarily having manifest signs.
Whytt's text, instead of pinning down the meaning of sensibility
and irritabilityas fixed and univocal entities, lets them become manifest
in diverse forms. In the case of motion, a whole set of variations is
presented, which set is logically organized into a structure of syntax,
making motion into an elaborate language in which feeling might express
itself. It is this aspect of motion that shall be furtherexplored here.
One of the points where Whytt opposes Haller is the one-sided
conclusion that the lack of pain always signifies the lack of sensibility. In
Whytt,there are differentdegrees of sensibility and irritabilityin different
body parts (106-07) and in differentpeople. Young children, or people
with delicate nerves and quick feelings, are "subject to spasms and
convulsive motions of their stomach, intestines,etc. and to palpitations of
their heart,fromsuch slight causes as would scarce sensibly affectmen of
firmerconstitution and less moveable nerves" (186). Whytt distinguishes
between three types of irritabilityon the basis of where it happens and
what the stimulus is. In differenttypes of irritabilitymotion appears in
various forms. It can manifest itself in alternate contractions peculiar to
muscles, where the inflammation is due to "the irritated vessels
themselves, which are agitated with strong alternate vibratory
contractions; by means of which the moment [sic] of the blood in them is
greatly increased, and red globules are pushed into those vessels which,
in a sound state, only receive serum or lymph" (137-38; emphasis added).
Uniform contraction, on the other hand, is performed in the pores of the
skin. In this case, muscles "contract uniformly and equably during the
time the stimulus operates, without any intermissions or alternate
relaxations" (214). Or, as in a third type of irritability,redness and
inflammation are "excited in every part of the body that is sensible, as
often as acrid things are applied to it" (153).
Motion presents itself in various forms, such as contraction,
inflammation, convulsion, vibration, agitation, pushing. Its meaning is
constantly in motion, displacing, surpassing itself, thus enacting its own
164

connotations and derivatives one after the other. On an investigation of

the etymology of the word, one would find that "to move" (which,
interestingly,has the word "emotion" among its derivatives) originates
from words connoting "to stir," "to push," "to set oneself going," "to
become displaced," "to pass beyond," as well as "to keep off, ward off,
defend." Motion constantly has to "push" itself further,to "pass beyond"
every desire for stoppage and closure, and also, driven by a desire for
closure, surpass itself and pass beyond motion, which desire again has to
be surpassed, because motion, when it reaches its overall goal,
extinguishes itself, which means stoppage, the end of motion, that is,
death, which motion has to "ward off," "keep off' in order to exist. The
aspect of temporalityis inherent in other derivatives of motion, namely,
"moment of time," "ephemeral," "temporary."
The force that can put an end to motion by stopping and
interruptingit is feeling: a sudden fear, joy, surprise, or grief. "Again,"
says Whytt,
if the motionsof muscles fromstimuliwere not owing to a
feeling,How could theconvulsivemotionsof thediaphragm
in the hiccup, be oftenimmediatelystopped by suddenfear,
joy, or grief?[. . .] And why should the convulsive motions
of the stomach and diaphragmin vomiting,be frequently
interruptedby extraordinaryfear, or any great or sudden
surprise? (215; emphasisadded)
Feeling, at this point, presents itself in differentforms; sensibility is not
Haller's univocal 'sensibility as pain' any more, but its meaning is
fragmented and dispersed into various types of affect. Yet sensibility,
even if it is constantly in motion, remains the controlling force over
motion. The relation between sensibility and irritabilitysets the whole
body into a sympatheticmovement thatis coordinated by feeling:
It is observable, that an irritationof the nerves, which are
the most sensible parts,produces the most violent motions
in the muscles; and when they are, by being stretched,
renderedmore susceptible of pain, still greaterconvulsions
are occasioned by prickingthem. [. . .] [T]hese motions,
which are occasioned by stimuli,acting, not on the organs
moved, but on distant parts [. . .] proceed from that
sympathy,which prevails in the nervous system;and must
be ascribed to an uneasy sensationin thepartirritated,since
all consent supposes feeling,and is inexplainable upon any
otherprinciple. (255-56)
The motion performedby the body upon the irritationof various parts is a
harmonious motion, where distant parts of the body communicate. One
part sets another into motion, until the whole body becomes a moving
organism where each movement has an effect on the other, which effect,
165

moreover, has meaning. The dissector is no longer the viewer of

suffering, but that of a performance, a work of art. Movement is
regulated, coordinated, just as in dance; the irritated,tortured,painful
body becomes a dancing body; the viewer's pleasure turns out to be
intellectual pleasure or aesthetic pleasure that is generated within the
discourse of torture. Motion that terminates in death is kept on by
constant irritationin order to surpass its terminationand thus to be able to
heal the human. Moreover, the heart, the blind spot of Haller's
experiments, also opens up in the tortureof dissection, and startsto speak
"the language of the heart" before the animal expires:
The heart [of the dog], which was thus broughtinto view,
appeared quite turgid,and continued in motion about five
minutes:duringwhich time it performedonly between 60
and 65 weak vibrations; for they were not compleat
contractions.While the heartwas thusmoving,warm spittle
was firstapplied to it, thencold water,and, last of all, oil of
vitriol,which shrivelledthe parts it touched, almost in the
same manner as a hot iron would have done; but none of
them accelerated the heart's vibrations, which became
graduallyslower,tilltheyceased altogether.(206-07)
The language the heart is made to speak is motion; the symbolic organ of
affect can claim its own feelings by acting them out in vibrations and
contractions weakening in the act of forced signification. The heart,
before it is killed by the "language of the heart," speaks about the text
that emerges between the heart and its torturer:Whytt's text, by bringing
its concepts (among them sensibility and feeling) into motion, acts out
what he claims, i.e., that sensibility and motion are interrelated. As the
eternal motion of the body eventually becomes a symptom of sensibility,
so a narrative of/about sensibility will stage the motion inherent in the
meaning of sensibility as a concept.
However, Whytt does indeed put an end to motion after all. The
metonymic chain shiftingfrom motion to sensibility cannot help moving
further onto a final referent, which shift will mean a moment of
termination: "[. . .] as gravity must finally be resolved into the power of
that Being who upholds universal nature; so it is highly probable, that the
irritabilityof the muscles of animals is owing to that living sentient
principle, which animates and enlivens their whole frame" (184). Here
Whytt makes God into the ultimate signifier of sensibility, thus the
undecipherable internalphenomenon acquires a referentoutside the body.
The externalization of sensibility, viewed in Scarry's context of torture,
where the significance of feeling is removed from the body, is an act that
tears sensibility away from the inside of the body and thrustsit upon an
ultimate agent, thereby turning the utmost inside of the body/psyche
outside. It is interestingthat God, the source of all sensation and feeling
in this context of tortureshould emerge as the ultimate weapon, a Sadean
166

arch-torturer
something like the dissecting physician, the controller of
movement and feeling, whose presence turns Whytt's text back onto
Haller's dissertation revealing the underlying similarity of their
assumptions.
The coordinated motion of the animals - a chain of signifiers in
which sensibility is expressed and produced - is a texture woven
somewhere in between physician and animal; it is motion regulated by
the stimulus of pain, a perverted puppet-dance mocking voluntary
motion. If motion is determined by sensibility, and sensibility is due to
someone other than the moving being, then motion ceases to be
expressive of an internal phenomenon. Instead, it will be due to an
external moving force. The half-living, tortured animals and their
separated, dead body parts, in Whytt's text, will performa dance similar
to. the puppet-dance in Paul de Man's interpretationof Kleist's story,
"Uber das Marionettentheater."The dancing puppets, as de Man claims
with Kleist, do not express by their motion any internal passion or
emotion; the aesthetic effect is determined by the formalityof the tropes
the dance is made up of. The dance of the puppets is truly aesthetic
exactly because of the lack of expressivity; it is a motion that is not
determined by desire. In the puppet-dance, "[t]he aesthetic power is
located neitherin the puppet nor in the puppeteer but in the text that spins
itself between them. This text is the transformational system, the
anamorphosis of the line as it twists and turns into the tropes of ellipses,
parabola, and hyperbole. Tropes are quantified systems of motion" (28586). Whether motion, as Haller claims it about irritability,is an innate,
always present characteristicof the dead matteror, as in Whytt's opinion,
it is due to sensibility which is granted by God the ultimate external
agency, the texture woven by motion and created in order to explain and
make manifest an affect will, paradoxically, not be explainable as a
signifyingsystem referringto, or expressive of, affects.
Affect and sensibility imagined as something hidden deep inside
the living organism are not possible to grasp by signification, yet they
will keep surfacing in the texts written about the quest for them. The
physician attempts to silence his own emotions while carrying out the
experiments the violence of which would be a sufficientlytraumatizing
experience for any viewer; Haller understands the burden of cruelty, as
his apology makes it clear. The elimination of feelings leads to the
affects' dispersal in action, in these cases the repeated and compulsive act
of violence and the creation of a language by constantly tryingout the
iterabilityof its signs. The physician's activity of making the body into a
readable signifyingsystem and thus erasing pain as pain can be seen as a
symptom, an act of somatization following from his own state seemingly
void of affect. The texture created in this way as a result of this process,
a possible field for the aesthetic (and the literary),is woven between the
scientist and animal, puppeteer and puppet; it is the interpretationbeing
constantly created between reader and text. However, affect is still
167

written back into this texture- or more precisely, it is when these

textures are made into representation, the process in which the
experiments are written into a narrative, that sensibility and affect are
produced.
The text woven by the experiments is a system of signifiers that
lost its reference to sensibility as its original signified, and startsliving its
own life producing affectand sensibility in the process of its own coming
into being. Affect announces its presence in the process of the creation of
its- inadequate - representation,in the effortsimplied in this creation. It
speaks through the points where signification breaks down and other
discourses make themselves visible, when a text that tries to make affect
into a language betrays its inadequacy. It is in this way, in structures
silenced by the physician, such as violence, suffering,the aesthetic, and
pleasure, that affect and sensibility come into existence through a
language created by an ostensibly affectless analysis.
Tropes: Writing Insensibility and Silence
Another layer of signification that emerges from Haller's
dissection is the context of war. At one point in his Dissertation, Haller
describes his disagreement with another scientist, Schlichting, in terms of
a war foughtby the two physicians, who gain informationabout the state
of the brain by torturingtheir animal-captives. When responding to his
adversary in the debate about whether there is motion in the brain or not,
Haller writes:
Being fully convinced of the strongadhesion of the dura
mater to the cranium, and of the total plentitudeof the
contents of the skull, I could not help wondering at the
boldness with which this author maintained the contrary;
however, I did not thinkof refutinghim by authoritiesor
reasons a priori, but judged it the best to fighthim withhis
own weapons, that is by experiments.WhereforeI opened
the skulls of several dogs with a hammer and a chisel,
which is a more commodious way than with a trepan,and
exposed to view a large part of the brain; and this
experimentI frequentlyrepeated upon dogs, goats, rats,
frogs,cats, and other animals. The event was always the
same, viz. I saw a manifestmotion in the dura mater, or
ratherin the whole brain,such as Schlichtinghas described,
forit ascended in expirationand descended in inspiration.
(21; emphasisadded)
The series of experiments is itself a weapon in a war, where the captured
victims are means of gaining information about the stake of the conflict
between the two opposing parties, which stake is the hidden territoryof
the brain. The weapons in the battle are also instruments of torture:
168

hammer, chisel, or at other times blowing heat, spirit of wine, oil of

vitriol, or butter of antimony (6). The scientific description of the
experiment turns into a field where differenttypes of narratives collapse
into each other, an account of a scene of war where physicians are
fightingforthe hidden secrets of the body.
In what follows, I will read eighteenth-centuryinstances of torture
and human suffering in the context of war- the tropes of which, as
examined above, are constitutive of the texture of Hallerian animal
dissection. I will do close readings of letters written during the Seven
Years' War that broke out one year after the publication of Haller's
Dissertation. In these texts, like in the medical setting, the emergence of
sensibility is inseparable from violence, torture, and pain. Ironically
enough, in writing about pain and human suffering for the sake of a
scholarly re-examination of the concept of sensibility, my close reading
cannot help repeating the Hallerian crueltyto some extent- as well as the
gesture of sympathy and compassion implied in exposing the
experiences of the victims of torture.One is (inside) what one dissects, it
seems. However, one way of avoiding a voyeuristic perspective and
entirely repeating violence is showing toe perspective of the victim and
letting the victims write and speak their affective experience. Even
though, in this case, this does not release my reading from being part of
the cruelty, yet it exposes the violence which blurs the boundaries of
sensibility and insensibility. Through the victims' own creation of
discourses of sensibility in their narration of extreme suffering,such a
reading can show how the concept and narratives of sensibility come into
existence through violence. It can also reveal how it is violence and
cruelty that eventually create discourses of sensibility by making the
expression and representationof affectdifficultor impossible.
The stories addressed by this means are from the time of the
Seven Years' War, published in 1760, and taken from letters writtenby
clergymen robbed, attacked, and viciously torturedby plundering Russian
troops in Prussia. The volume of letters is meant to be an emotional
trigger,as the writerof the preface, Rev. George Whitefield, makes clear,
who aims at raising feelings of compassion and sympathyin the reader by
making public other people's suffering.In these letters,it is the victim of
violence who attempts to communicate pain both verbally and
nonverbally, to speak the language of pain by giving an account of his
own suffering.
The clergymen who survive the plundering of the Cossacks admit
the difficulty or impossibility of narrating of suffering. The atrocities
committed by the soldiers are "inhumanities exceeding all expression"
( Russian Cruelty, Letter 1, 1759, 5), of which "it is easier to say, Come
and see! Than to describe it" (Letter 2, 1760, 8). Relating the events is
itself a "grievous labour to my heart" (12), and what is related is never
one's sufferingbut the sufferingof others as a substitute for one's own
pain. The following victim (Letter 3, 1759), however, tries to narrate his
169

own suffering as exactly as possible, yet at the beginning he has to

confess that the account of his pain can never be complete, due to a
frequent loss of consciousness during the experience: "As to my
sufferings,I confess, I am not able to give an account of all of them. For
what those Barbarians, the Cossacks, attempted upon me, when I was
deprived of my senses, I know not. I shall only relate, without any
aggravation, what I have seen and felt" (17).
The account where the sufferertries to narrate his pain is a scene
of cruel torture,which later turns into a theatrical display of feelings on
both the torturer's and the victim's part, something that we might call a
scene of sensibility and suffering.The unnarratabilityof the experience of
extreme pain lies in its being interruptedby moments of unconsciousness,
called insensibility by the narrator,which result either from too much
pain felt by the victim, or from the soldiers' method of constantly
depriving the victim of consciousness:
My bare head was covered withblood and swellingsby one
strokeof a pistol, and more with the kantshuh;as was my
whole back miserablybeaten and dyed with bloody stripes,
by the same means, and by theirnaked swords, by which
they every momentthreatenedto split my head. With the
rope I was choaked one time after another, so as to be
deprivedof breathand senses.
[. . .] One gave me a push on mybreastwithhis feet;and
anothertoreme, withmy back on the ground,to the door of
the chamber,fastenedtherope so as to choke me again, that
I lost breath and feeling. In this posture my boots were
pulled off with such a force as to tear the stringsoff the
knees, withoutbeing unloosed. I was leftfor dead, and I
don't know how I came to myselfagain. But when I did, I
saw what was done, as the stringsof my boots fell of my
knees. [. . .] I begged on my knees for mercy and
compassion,pointingat the same timeto my sore body. But
therewas no mercyto be found.Now theycried,Fire! In my
own house was no fire:whereforetheyled me by the rope
into another house. One of them so benumbed me by a
stroke on my head, that I fell to the ground. In this
insensibility,my cloaths, except the breeches, were pulled
off,and the shirtdrawnover myhead, and a fourfoldtorture
of firebegan. [. . .] As this,notwithstanding
my lamentable
cries, was judged not hard enough,theylightedmore straw,
and threwme down upon it half naked, keeping me fast on
the rope; and all thatwhile thatmy back lay on the lighted
straw, my bare breast and belly were whipped. (18-20;
emphasisadded)
In this scene of human cruelty, pain is experienced in a constant
oscillation of consciousness and loss of consciousness, in a repeated
survival of death, which the suffererfears every time a new series of
170

attacks starts, as he more than once "recommended [his] soul to the

paternal hands of God" (20). When the victim is not in the state of
insensibility,then he is in the state of pain, which is the only meaning of
feeling during torture.In this case, just as in Haller's text, it is in pain that
sensibility can be grasped.
The most intense pain- the most perfect state of sensibilityresults in the loss of consciousness, i.e., insensibility. Thus the meaning
of insensibility (understood as the lack of sensation in the text) shifts
from the opposite of Hallerian sensibility to the strongest and most
refined state of feeling. Feeling, in the victim's experience, easily turns
into the lack of feeling; sensibility and insensibility are made
interchangeable by the extremities of torture. The capacity for feeling
(which here equals feeling pain) is strongly connected to states of
consciousness: as the intensityof the affect changes so does the state of
consciousness.
The most intense affect entirely cancels
out
consciousness, creating a site for the strongest affective experience and
making the experience unknown at the same time by placing it into the
unconscious. Thus, experiencing pain in this state is ratherthe negative of
experiencing, i.e., experiencing under erasure. In the letter,the narration
of intense affect therefore cannot be properly accomplished, and pain
must ever remain an unconscious point or the narration. The story will
stand as a substitute for the unnarratable pain, an inadequate
representationallegorically narratingthe inexpressibility of an affect,like
a aream-text hiding, ratherthan revealing the Unconscious.
What actually gets told in the letter is not the sufferer's feelings,
but the act that is committed on his body, which, in its turn, is only
partially told due to the frequent loss of consciousness. Pain, on the one
hand, is narrated as another's action and what can be known of it
consciously. On the other hand, the pain experienced by the sufferercan
be suggested by referringto what the other's supposed reaction should
be: the victim points at his sore body to elicit mercy, compassion, and
evaluates his cries as lamentable. He would like to evoke affective
reaction in the torturers,but no reaction takes place; the victim's and the
torturer'sinsensibility mutually reflectand facilitate each other.
Compassion in the Cossacks appears later, when the scene of
tortureturns into a scene of suffering,a theatrical episode of the father
(narrator of the previous paragraph) lamenting the misfortunes of the
women and children, including his own family attacked by the soldiers
who break into the church-building:
[. . .] when, aftera vain attemptto break open the doors,
they climbed into [the church] throughthe window, when
heart-breakingshrieks of the women and children were
heard. [. . .] But what a mournfulsight,when the beating
and plunderingnow began in the church-yard!O what an
affectingsightwas it to me, when I observed my dear wife
underthe hands of these savages; and what griefpierced my
171

soul, when she was thrustto the ground and robbed of the
greatestpartof her cloaths. The cossack, which kept me by
the rope, led me to her, in my dismal condition,which, at
first,made me unknownto her;but,when she came to know
me, she was most sorely grieved. Yet my intersessionto
save her, because she was sick, through the divine
had such an influenceupon the heartsof these
interposition,
savages, thattheylet hergo halfcloathed,withoutusing any
otherviolence. (20-21)
The discourse noticeably changes at this point. Metaphoric expressions
carrying connotations to bodily wounding or mutilation referring to
psychic suffering such as "heart-breaking shrieks," "grief pierced my
soul" appear, together with the frequentuse of exclamations and parallel
structures.The scene that can come to existence in this form of narration
emerges when the torturedpriest, whose body is transformedin such a
way that his wife cannot recognize him first,is led to his family. The
victim's distorted, mutilated body- the product of violence - becomes
the site onto which pain is inscribed. The body bearing the marks of
tortureis another attemptedrepresentation,a texture having been created
between torturer and victim. It is this marked body in the state of
consciousness - i.e., being moved out of the state of insensibility- that
brings about affective response in the wife who becomes "sorely
grieved," which released emotion pours onto the husband and finally,
through a divinity that seems to be the ultimate source of feeling, just as
in Whytt's theory, reaches the soldiers as well. It is at this stage, in the
state of consciousness - when all the most intense affective experiences
are lost and are present only in the form of memories- that wordrepresentations carrying affective content can appear. It is the language
produced in this process, in the efforts of the verbalization of a
necessarily inadequate representationof affect, that I call a discourse of
sensibility.
A similar writing of the affective experience takes place in the
following letter, too. What is narrated here is a lamentation over the
present state of the writerof the text- something that substitutes for the
narration of the real calamities that actually happened to its author, and
which he tries to, but cannot, narrate:
My dear Friend!
You have oftendesired me to give you an account of my
loss, and the calamitycaused by it: But thoughI know thatI
would find compassion, and, if possible, even actual relief
fromyou, yet I could not prevail withmy bleeding heartto
describeit. Now, I shall not any longerdelay to complywith
your request; But don't expect particulars;the griefof my
heartwill not sufferme to specifythem,even to mybrother.
Pray forme, thatmyGod maybe pleased to supportme, that
I may notperishundertheweightof mycalamity.
172

I endeavour,every day, to forgetmy misfortunes;but the

encreasing want is a heart-breakingmemorandumof my
encreasingdistress.[. . .] My tears findno compassion. To
supply all these necessities, I have nothingin store, and I
live here only on the mercyof God, which is the only relief
that is left me, and of which I do not despair. [. . .] Thus
comes mypovertyand want as an armedman, upon me. My
wife and children,whichbefore,I could embrace withjoy, I
cannot now cast my eyes upon, withoutbeing grievously
touched [. . .] and I cannotprevail upon myheartto apply to
any body for relief. My calamity renders me dumb and
silent.- More tears than bread. [. . .] I must desist writing
any further;my heart breaks, and my sores are ripped up
again. God be with you. Pity one in great distress. Your
comfortswill refreshour hearts. (Russian Cruelty22-24)
The traumatic event remains an unknown calamity that silences the
narrator;it is a dumb point that cannot be named. The text that is actually
narrated is there instead of the particulars of the traumatic event; the
details are not specified; their telling remains blocked by the sufferer's
grief. He cannot narrate what he intends to, because what pours out of
him is an expressionless stream of language impossible to withhold,
deprived of signification or expressivity, that actually cancels out itself
before it could communicate anything from the narrator's originally
intended story: he has to stop, because he cannot continue writing. This
blockage in communication is due to an affect,which, in this case, is an
overflowing power that disorganizes structures of signification and
cancels out communication.
The result is a text that claims itself to be the voice of silence,
utteredby someone who is rendered dumb by calamities, whose griefand
"bleeding heart" prevent the additional sufferingof narration. The text
stands as an improper substitute for sheer dumbness, as a language of
silence that is necessarily an inadequate representation, since it is by
nature something that breaks the silence. On the other hand, it is also
inadequate as the narration of the traumatic event, since this is the very
point remaining absent from the text. The result is a language between
the silence and the cry19 which language is deprived both of its
communicative function and its expressiveness. It is a screen, a system of
tropes, which, by hiding and demolishing a referent,will paradoxically
put in its place silence, which cannot be its referent.The narrationof pain
and cruelty shiftsinto the realm of the aesthetic, becoming a paradoxical
aesthetics of pain, which is possible only if pain as pain is denied and
turned into a poetically constructed text. This text is also a purely
formalized system, determined by the mechanisms of its tropes. The
tropes determine the fate of the narration; it is in these fixed linguistic
forms that affect can textually present itself. And it is in this dead
language of affectthat the discourse of sensibility emerges.
173

The narratormakes attemptsat forgetting,but the forgottenevents

keep reappearing in the tropes of the text; the tropes will carry the
memory, where fragmentsor the past story are preserved and produced.
The text is a site of the repetition of the traumatic event, which keeps
haunting the narrative through its tropes. It presents a constant struggle
between memory and forgetting,narrating and not narrating. Whenever
the narratortries to narratethe events, what he presents is an overflowing
of tropes signifying silence. Yet this text of silence and forgetting
reintroduces the event through its tropes referring to wounding and
physical injuries: we get a glimpse of the silenced events through tropes
of "breaking heart," sores "ripped up," or the images of poverty and want
as soldiers attacking the victim. Every trope turns into a wound that
speaks, that retains the memory of the past traumatic event.
The affect involved in a narration that tries to- but cannotnarrate pain is present in the effortsof narration,representation,and the
sufferingincluded in giving meaning to the experience. It is there in the
attempts to forget and through forgetting repeat the traumatic event
verbally (which event can never be repeated, as it is always something
else that fills the void of the actual experience), and also in the act of
narration as energy discharge. Sensibility is the discourse coming into
existence in the above narrative as a channel that, through an act of
verbalization, makes possible the discharging of affect. It emerges as a
discourse that transmits one's sufferingto others in its dead and frozen
metaphors and rhetorical devices that are passed on as fixed meanings, as
cliches, from one text to the other. Every act of close reading the
familiar tropes and devices is an act of wounding, a way of listening
implying violence, that can make the storyof suffering and the story of
the sufferingand the anxiety inscribed in the creation of these tropescry out.
NOTES
1 For discussionsof thenotionand definitions
(^sensibility,see, forexample,
Barker-Benfield
andthenovel"in ThePolitics
xix; Markman
Ellis,"Sensibility,
history
5-48. The beliefin naturalgoodnessin thecultureof sensibility
has often
ofSensibility
beenattributed
to theinfluence
of moralsensephilosophy
and latitudinarianism,
as itis
"
and the
pointedoutin Cox: "The StrangerWithinThee 25; JohnMullan:"Sympathy
of Society"in Sentiment
Production
and Sociability18-56;MarkmanEllis 10-14;Todd
23-28. 2
AnIntroduction,
Fora "vocabulary"
ofsensibility,
seeJanet
Todd:Sensibility:
esp.
65-128.Brissenden
discussestheterm"sensibility"
withits meanings,
and
connotations,
within
whathe callsan "identifiably
'sentimental'
(13),amongtheterms
origins
vocabulary"
inDistress:StudiesintheNovelofSentiment
"sense""in Virtue
"sentiment,"
"sentimentality,"
AnAttempt
toSade,esp.chapter
'Sentimentalism':
atDefinition"
11-55.
fromRichardson
of fieldsof
Accordingto MarkmanEllis, sensibility
operateswithina variety
knowledge,includingthe historyof ideas, and thatof aesthetics,religion,political
andpopularculture.
Ellis sees thenovelofsensibility
as an
economy,science,sexuality,
174

of thesediscourses:"In the novel,in otherwords,sensibility

comes
amalgamation
toJanetTodd,thepresenceofsensibility
in all fieldsoflifecan
(8). According
together"
be accountedforin itspervasiveness
due to thecontagious
natureof feeling(75). Todd
in the operationof sensibility.
of contiguity
The close
emphasizesthe importance
betweenliterature
and life operates"not throughany notionof a
interrelatedness
mimeticdepictionof realitybut throughthe beliefthatthe literary
experiencecan
affectthelivingone. So literary
conventions
becomea wayof life"(4). On
intimately
of thelanguageof medicine,science,and sensibility,
theinterrelatedness
see also John
and Sociability201-40; Ann JessieVan Sant:Eighteenth-Century
Mullan:Sentiment
and the Novel: The Senses in Social Context
; and George S. Rousseau
Sensibility
andFibres."
"Nerves,Spirits,
These conceptswere also influential
for philosophiesof the aesthetic.
is one ofthefirst
oftheterm"aesthesia,"
thatis, thecapacityfor
"Sensibility"
meanings
is motionproducedby a painfulor pleasurablestimulus
sensation,and "irritability"
(Reiz). Reiz is a termpresentboth in the discourseof Germanaestheticswiththe
medicine,withthemeaningof a painful
meaningof "grace,"and in eighteenth-century
stimulus.As thecriticSimonRichterpointedout,theuse of Reiz and reizbarkeit
in
Herder'saesthetics
andpsychology
was shapedbytheinfluence
ofHaller'sDissertation
on theSensibleand IrritablePartsofAnimals,whichtextfocuseson thedefinition
of
thesenotions(Richter
32).
Methodsthatcanbe helpfulguidelines
in tracing
thenatureoftherelationship
of hiddeninternalphenomenonor affectand representation
are offeredby: Julia
Kristeva'sconceptof theabjectin PowersofHorror,therelationof dream-content
to
- a formof representation
- in Sigmund
theunconscious
thathidesratherthanreveals
Freud's Interpretation
of Dreams; or an indirectapproachto affectdiscussedin
AndreGreen'sFabric ofAffect,
thatis, addressing
notthephenomenon
psychoanalyst
butitssurroundings
andexpansions,
thedomainsthattogether
withoffering
limits
itself,
to thephenomenon,
willpour(283).
providea receptacleinwhichaffects
In ancientphysiologies,
the heartwas consideredto be the centerof all
sensation.
K. D. Keele pointsoutthat,accordingto Aristotle,
thesensibility
of an organ
is closelyrelatedto its contentof blood. In his view, the heartcreatesthe blood
containedin it fromfood,anditpossessesthehighestdegreeof sensibility
in thebody:
"Forthefirstsensory
partis thatwhichfirsthas blood;thatis to say,theheartwhichis
the source of blood, and the firstparts to containit." (Aristotle'sDe Partibus
Animalium,
qtd. in Keele,Anatomiesof Pain 32). Keele findstheoriginof metaphors
suchas "hard-hearted"
in thebeliefthatthedegreeofthesensibility
or "soft-hearted"
of
theheartcan varyin different
animalsdependenton thedensenessor softnessof the
texture
oftheorgan(32). Fora further
discussionoftheheartas thecenterof sensation,
see "The SensoryHeart"and "The GreekDebate on theHeart,Brain and Pain" in
Anatomies
ofPain 1-15;16-40.
See chaps."Introduction"
and "Gazingon Suffering"
1-15;45-59. However,
thisapproachstillsuggeststhata separation
ofdiscoursesreallytookplace; thepresence
or absenceofaffective
elementsin later,oreventwentieth-century,
scientific
discourses
couldbe a questionoffurther
investigation.
In hisMemoirsofAlbertde Haller,M. D. (Warrington:
Eyres,1783),Haller's
ThomasHenrypraisesHaller'shumanity
and talentand regardshimas an
biographer,
exampleto follow.Henrycreatesa generalimageof Halleras a manof feeling,whose
everystep is directedby the benefitof mankind.Even his crueltyto animalsgets
justifiedas follows:
The compassionhe feltforthevictimof his researches,
is often
We behold him,
apparentin the narrativeof his experiments.
no occasion of
impressedwitha kindof remorse;and omitting
on the utilitywhichmay be derivedfromthemto
expatiating
mankind.He even seems desirousto believethattheseanimals
suffer
no pain,andunwilling
to renouncetheopinionofDescartes.
175

He was convincedthatan idle inquisitiveness,

or a passion for
couldnotjustify
ourkillingsensiblebeingsin torments:
reputation,
and thatwhatever
reasonwe mayhave to regardthemas formed
forouruse,itis absurdandcruelto imagine,
thattheyaredesigned
also tobe sportofourcuriosity
orvanity.(80-81)
thatcan be testedbycausingpainto animalsis
However,Haller'sconceptof sensibility
not compatiblewiththe Cartesianview thatanimalsare meremachineswithoutthe
capacityoffeeling.It is also notable,as ThomasHenrypointsout,thatHaller- a manof
- createdlargebibliographies
the
in orderto preventothersfromsuffering
compassion
useless troubleof readingthroughall the books he needed to encounterfor his
researches
(85).
For theinterconnectedness
of sadismand masochismin thehumanpsyche,
see Freud,"The EconomicProblemof Masochism."HavelockEllis emphasizesthe
wherethe
ofthetwofeelingsandsees sadismas a versionofmasochism
transmutability
sadist'spleasurearisesfromimagining
thevictim'spain (160). In Deleuze, however,
sadism and masochismacquire completelydifferent
which,besides the
structures,
clinicalrealm,presentthemselvesas formative
mechanisms
of language,art,or the
narrative.In Coldness and Cruelty
, he also discussesthe mechanical,cumulative
characteristic
of structures
of sadism. When the sadist realizes the
repetitiveness
pettinessof his own crimescomparedto his notionof theideal crimehe constructs
all he can do in thedirection
of
oftheideal is to increasethenumber
through
reasoning
hisvictimsandtheirsuffering
(28).
In S/Z, Roland Barthesdistinguishes
betweenwriterly(scriptible)and
even
text,accordingto Barthes,can be (re)written
readerly(lisible) texts.The writerly
the
anddifference
today;itis a textbasedon theinfinite
(including
playofthesignifier
text'srevealingits difference
textthe
fromitself).While in the case of the writerly
readerbecomestheproducerofthetext,thereaderly
textis a productconsumedby the
reader.Readerly
"classic"byBarthes(see Bardies4; Johnson
5-6).
11On textsaretermed
itselfbytheexclusionof animalism,
see also Kristeva
humanity
defining
12.
12Cf.Klossowski69-70.
However,in Scarry'sapproachtheredoes notseemto be a cleardistinction
betweenthe operationof the languageof torture
and thatof languageitself.What
thelanguageoftorture
fromotherlanguages,according
to Scarry,seemsto
distinguishes
be the distinction
of theaffectof pain fromothertypesof affecton thebasis of its
to thosewhoare notin pain.In thecontextof understanding
affectsthe
inaccessibility
otherinternalstatesof theselfare notjust as
questionmightarise,however,whether
inaccessibleto the otherpersonas pain- even if pain indeedcannotbe pain "of'
or"for"something.
The natureandqualityoftheother'slove,anger,grief,
or
something
to the one not
any psychicor somaticstate mightbe similarlyincomprehensible
them;the possibilityof doubtcannotbe dismissed.Therefore,
experiencing
taking
Scarry'sideas to theirlogicalconclusionmightmeanthatlanguageitself,in expressing
and describing
or language
can be characterized
of torture
affect,
by Scarry'smetaphor
of agency,sincethereis signification.
Her approachseemsto implythatit is thevery
- and not simplythe languageof torture
- thatis potentially
natureof signification
sadistic.
The bodyof scientific
examination
structured
of manylayersis discussedin
FrancisBarker'sanalysisof representations
bodiesthatusually
of seventeenth-century
different
whichlayerscan present
contain,likepalimpsests,
layersofsignifying
systems,
themselvesat the same timeat pointswheresignification
becomesproblematic.
See
Barker'sanalysisof Rembrandt's
The AnatomyLesson of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp in The
TremulousPrivateBody (65-102). The layersof signification
croppingup in the
breachesdrawsattention
For this,see the
to thetraumastructure
of Haller'snarrative.
reference
to Tasso's JerusalemLiberatedas an exampleforrepetition
compulsionin
Freud'sBeyondthePleasurePrinciple
: Tancred
176

kills his beloved Clorindain a duel while she is

unwittingly
disguisedin thearmourof an enemyknight.Afterherburialhe
makes his way into a strangemagic forestwhich strikesthe
Crusaders'armywithterror.
He slasheswithhis swordat a tall
tree;but blood streamsformthe cut and thevoice of Clorinda,
in thetree,is heardcomplaining
thathe
whosesoul is imprisoned
has woundedhisbelovedtwice.(22)
experience,
CathyCaruthrereadsFreud'sreadingof thestoryin relationto traumatic
thewound.According
to Caruth,
traumais
on thevoicethatis releasedthrough
focusing
notlocatablein the simpleviolenteventin theindividual'spast,but "it is alwaysa
to tellus ofa realityortruth
thatis
woundthatcriesout,thataddressesus in theattempt
nototherwise
available"(4).
Cf. theworkings
of motionand themeaningof "motion"to PeterBrooks'
desire,i.e., a motorforceof thenarrative
which,together
conceptof plot as narrative
theact of narration,
withmaintaining
bybeinga desirefortheend,is also a forcethat
in orderto move on, has to
to a closure.The narrative,
finallybringsthe narrative
(ReadingforthePlot, esp.
surpassitsowndesireforending,which"kills"thenarrative
37-61). Brooks'stheoryis based on themodelof thefort/dagameand therepetition
- based
offered
compulsion
byFreudin BeyondthePleasurePrinciple.A relatedstudy
- is Flynn's"Running
outofMatter,"
whichemphasizesthehealing,
on Brooks'stheory
in eighteenth-century
stimulation,
motion,and terror
curingaspectof painfulirritation,
ofnarration.
medicalpracticesandtechniques
in a psychoanalytic
ofaffects
as a symptom
see
Forthesomatization
context,
and
JoyceMcDougall's TheatersoftheBody. McDougallcalls suchstates"disaffected"
she attributes
actionsand addictivebehaviourin herpatientsto the
certainrepetitive
emotional
foreclosureof feelingsfrom consciousnessdue to an overwhelming
is ejectedfrom
theidentity.
Whenthepsychicpartof affects
experiencethatthreatened
a resomatization
ofaffect
takesplace(90-105).
consciousness,
of affectin close reading,anotherostensiblyaffectless
Cf. the surfacing
in "TextualHarassment."
method,as analyzedby Isobel Armstrong
Armstrong
puts
forward
a definition
of close readingthatis notbased on a feeling/thought
dichotomy,
and which includesaffectwithina definitionof thoughtand knowledge.In her
- based on Levinas'sapproachto surrealist
- affectis "thelimitcase
aesthetics
reading
in erasure"(417). It underliesthestructure
of thought
of languageandis presentin the
itselfin the
works,thatis,byeach thought
processoferasurebywhichthought
othering
creationof anotherthought,erasingotherpossible thoughtsand thus creatinga
Affect
can be graspedin this
palimpsest-structure
underlying
meaningand signification.
processof creationof meaningand thoughtas cathexis,a build-upand release of
energiesduringtheprocess(409).
See AndreGreen'sdistinction
betweentwo typesof affect:One whichis
in theunconscious
andpreconscious
intothestructures
of signification
chain,
integrated
and thesecond,whichoverflows
fromthischainand destroys
structures,
sense-making
andwhichmayparalyzeorlead to compulsive
action(Madness206).
Green,Madness205.
For languageas a transmitter
to consciousness,
see
of theact of awakening
Caruth'
s analysisrelatedto Lacan's readingofthedreamoftheburning
childdiscussed
by Freud.In Lacan's reading,thewordsof thechildaddressedto fie fatherare no
of
longermastered
by theone who saysthem,buttheyare themeansof transmission,
of awakeningto others.See "Traumatic
Freud,
passingon theimperative
Awakenings:
Lacan,andtheEthicsofMemory"(91-113).
177

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CITED
AND CONSULTED
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180


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Centre for Arts, Humanities and Sciences (CAHS), acting on behalf of the University of

SENSIBILITY IN DISSECTION: AFFECT, AESTHETICS, AND THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BODY IN

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literary critic. Haller was, for his contemporaries, a well-known and

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irritable,and to examine how these phenomena operate. As in the case of

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humanitarian perspective, since they will serve the benefit of mankind,

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scientific text, or it has not established its scientific nature by an act of

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insensible glue" (215) as Haller claims, but it is a consequence of an

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connotations and derivatives one after the other. On an investigation of

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moreover, has meaning. The dissector is no longer the viewer of

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written back into this texture- or more precisely, it is when these

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hammer, chisel, or at other times blowing heat, spirit of wine, oil of

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own suffering as exactly as possible, yet at the beginning he has to

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attacks starts, as he more than once "recommended [his] soul to the

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I endeavour,every day, to forgetmy misfortunes;but the

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The narratormakes attemptsat forgetting,but the forgottenevents

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of thesediscourses:"In the novel,in otherwords,sensibility

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He was convincedthatan idle inquisitiveness,

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kills his beloved Clorindain a duel while she is

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Armstrong,Isobel. "Textual Harassment:The Ideology of Close Reading, or

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- . The Interpretationof Dreams. Trans. A. A. Brill. Ware: Wordsworth

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New York: Grove, 1966.

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