Secularization of pain shifted attention from consoling relationships to detached investigation

Evidence

In this example the secularization of pain signals not merely the abandonment of a transcendental language (“religious obsessions”) but the shift to a new preoccupation—from the personal attempt at consoling and curing (that is, inhabiting a social relationship) to a distanced attempt at investigating the functions and sensations of the living body. Pain is in- flicted in systematic fashion on animals in order to understand its physiological basis. So on the one hand we have pain inhabiting a discourse between patient and physician; on the other, pain is the reading made through experimental observation in a context where—as de Certeau noted—language has become de-ontologized. It is this latter model that informs Enlightenment skepticism toward the shaman’s curative claims (mixed up as they are with ecstatic displays and “inspiration” by invisible spirits) and helps to constitute the secular domain of physiological knowledge through written reports of experimental results. The contrast is not properly described in terms of “disenchantment” when what is at stake are different patterns of sensibility about pain, and different ways of objectifying it. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 234

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates Weber’s disenchantment narrative in the vault — Asad argues ‘secularization of pain’ is a shift in sensibility/objectification, not loss of meaning. Directly connects to the Asad-Cooper thread on how secular categories encode Protestant norms of detachment.
• DEFINE: Asad redefines what ‘secularization’ of a concept like pain actually consists in — a shift in social preoccupation rather than mere loss of transcendence.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 234