What does suffering mean?

At a first glance, the question “what does suffering mean?” does not seem to be a political issue. In fact, the problem of pain might be a merely natural or private one. This could explain why one is not talk about pain, or at least not in public. Furthermore, it is not always possible to say or to express one’s suffering (because of its intensity or because of what causes it, etc.). Yet, this intrinsic apolitical aspect of painmight define precisely the way in which the problem of pain and suffering touches the political sphere and becomes a political problem. On the one hand, the very fact that one is not to (or cannot) talk about pain defines the margins of the political sphere, namely the frontier between the private and the public sphere, between what can and what cannot be said. However, on the other hand, the intrinsic impossibility to express pain makes its political utilization possible: from its tacit exploitation to the different strategies used to evince it (for instance through the use of medicines) or to dissimulate it (politics of marginalization, reclusion, etc.). Society itself is divided between the ones that are abandoned to pain, the ones that are trained to suffer, the ones that are trained to make suffer, the ones that should not suffer. Pain divides society in multiple ways and society defines itself marginalizing or incorporating pain in view of its different uses, significations and justifications. But despite of this, pain is inevitable and by itself contaminates frontiers.

The question “what does suffering mean?” invites us to interrogate theses different silences and what makes expressing suffering necessary: when does suffering exceed the private sphere? What are the limits beyond which suffering becomes intolerable and must give itself a political expression? What are the different modes and forms in which pain can be expressed and in what sense does suffering constitute a part of our being in common? Why and how can pain become a political weapon to the point of taking voluntarily visible forms (as in the case of hunger strikes, immolations etc.)? Conversely, what do the different strategies of evincing and erasing suffering implicate?

MONDAY OCTUBER 29TH 2 0 1 2

16:00-16:30 hrs

Inauguration
Aïcha Liviana Messina (Universidad Diego Portales, Chile)
Nameless suffering: ethical and political issues of the problem of suffering.

16:30-18:10 hrs

Rodrigo de la Fabián (Universidad Diego Portales, Chile)
Body, suffering and alterity: in between solitude and testimony

Marcus Coelen (University of Munich, Germany)
Cruelty – Some Thoughts on an Absent Relation to Suffering.

18:30-21:00 hrs

Jorge Montealegre (Universidad de Santiago, Chile) 
Memory and suffering: shame and (self)silenced victims of political prisoners.

Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir (University of Iceland)
Suffering and Conflict: Philosophical and Political Perspectives

Mauro Basaure (Universidad Andres Bello, Chile)
Sufrir dos veces. La diferencia entre el sufrimiento moral y el sufrimiento político

TUESDAY OCTUBER 30TH 2 0 1 2

16:00-17:40 hrs

Nicolás Del Valle (Universidad Diego Portales, Chile)
Suffering, memory and ideology in Theodor Adorno

Juan Sebastián Ospina Martínez (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia)
The conceptual limits of injury: how is it possible to represent justice, responsibility and suffering in a context of massive atrocities? 

18:00-20:30 hrs

Angela María Duarte (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia)
Sufering and responsibility in Jean-Luc Nancy’s political thought.

Andrea Potestà (Pontifica Universidad Catolica, Chile) 
The suffering’s knowledge.

Ilit Ferber (University of Tel Aviv, Israel) 
The Cry of Language: Emile and the Essay on the Origin of Language

Free entrance.