Keywords Acculturation , Human Worth , Pain , Power Relations , Religion , Society , Suffering , War and Medicine Summary Scarry argues that pain is the most absolute definer of reality. This characteristic of pain makes it useful politically. In torture, for example, the reality of the one being tortured is reduced to an awareness of pain, while the torturer's world remains fully present. This is realized most emphatically when torture is described as information-gathering. The torturer insists on questions that for the tortured are no longer of any concern.
War also makes use of pain.
In the dispute that leads to war, one country's beliefs are pitted against another's. The injured bodies of war re-connect the victor's beliefs with the material world. If the injured body is the ultimate in reality, the injured bodies of war can be used to signify the reality of the victor's position. Simultaneously, the pain of individuals in war is transferred to inanimate objects or large groups. Pain is not only described as a medical term, but as an aspect of war, torture, and other explicitly political acts.