Pain, suffering, and the female body: A historical, philosophical, and psychoanalytic approach

This article examines how pain and suffering experienced by women are shaped and delegitimised within historical, philosophical, and psychoanalytic regimes of knowledge. Through an analysis of medical practice, philosophical traditions and psychoanalytic insights, the author demonstrates that pain is not a neutral biological sensation but rather an epistemologically, politically and symbolically structured phenomenon. The focus lies on the female body as a site where patriarchal discourses, institutional indifference and linguistic inadequacy intersect. Special attention is paid to obstetric violence and its inscription into the psychosymbolic structure of the subject. The aim of this article is to highlight the need for new regimes of recognizing pain, grounded in an ethics of care, a political analysis of vulnerability, and feminist theory of the body. By doing so, the paper opens up the question of possible alternatives ethics of care, epistemologies of vulnerability and feminist politics of recognition which acknowledge pain as a political category and a call for transformation of the regime of attention.