About pain and bodies that matter

Abstract

The focus of the work is the question of the articulation of pain in the poetry collection Promotional video for my homeland (2010) by Adisa Bašić and Do smrti naredne (2016) by Senka Marić. Two poetic testimonies talk about dealing with cancer and mastectomy (Senka Marić Do smrti naredne, 2016) and caring for a mother suffering from cancer and dealing with her death (Adise Bašić Promotional spot for my homeland, 2010), posing the question of how to speak/live o/s pain. Although mental and physical pain is difficult to express in words, as stated by Scarry (1985), it is necessary not to allow pain to become a sign of silence and ineffability since ineffability has political consequences (Scarry) because those who suffer pain remain invisible and isolated in their "realm". The scattered internal and external manifestations of fragments of a life occupied by illness and pain reveal to us that society/culture does not see and does not want to see individual cases, especially those that remind us of death and disrupt the myth of social progress. Therefore, the literary imagination that speaks about the other, articulating pain and introducing the voices of those who suffer, includes and makes visible/shareable/public what society suppresses, taboos and ignores with its sophisticated procedures.