"Know that I do not suffer, unlike you..." - Visual and Verbal Codings of Pain in Body and Performance Art

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the article: The flagellation and crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Mater dolorosa, tortured martyrs such as Saint Sebastian - Western art history abounds in painted and sculpted displays of pain and suffering. By illustrating the necessity of painful submission to the symbolic order, these images have always served as reminders of Christian duty and morality: "Literally crucified, Christ gives figural expression to the way all human subjects must subject themselves to the law of the father and the reality principle he stands in for" (Bronfen 109). Christian iconography usually foregrounds the cruelty of the pain sustained and its ideals of passive endurance and unconditional confidence in God by the typical, visibly restrained motility of the figures involved. Christian images of suffering thus privilege a specific form of pain-processing and rely on the spectatorial gaze, which is why they are intimately linked with gender issues, as Kaja Silverman contends: "Christian masochism has radically emasculating implications, and is in its purest forms intrinsically incompatible with the pretensions of masculinity" (198).