THE PATHOS OF TIME: CHRONIC PAIN AND TEMPORALITY
THE PATHOS OF TIME: CHRONIC PAIN AND TEMPORALITY

Summary/Abstract: The paper offers a phenomenological interpretation of the temporality of chronic pain. First, I maintain that the field of presence constitutes the exhaustive horizon within which chronic pain is lived. Secondly, I argue that chronic pain is a form of depersonal-ization in that it cuts the field of presence from the past and the future. Thirdly, drawing on some recent phenomenological and neurological findings, I argue that the past and the future, despite their apparent irreality, continue to affect the present “behinds its back”: either through implicit bodily memory, or through implicit bodily anticipation. Thus despite its depersonalizing effects, chronic pain is a deeply personal experience. In my conclusion, I turn to the therapeutic significance of such a phenomenology of tem-porality. I maintain that if chronic pain is nested in implicit temporality, then to confront it, one must become conscious of its effects and, if possible, neutralize their meaning.

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