Suffering inscribes a bodily way of knowing that remains privileged yet non-exclusive among standpoints

Evidence

When I use the phrase “passion of experience,” it encompasses many feelings but particularly suffering, for there is a particular knowledge that comes from suffering. It is a way of knowing that is often expressed through the body, what it knows, what has been deeply inscribed on it through experience. This complexity of experience can rarely be voiced and named from a distance. It is a privileged location, even as it is not the only or even always the most important location from which one can know. In the classroom, I share as much as possible the need for critical thinkers to engage multiple locations, to address diverse stand points, to allow us to gather knowledge fully and inclusively. Sometimes, I tell students, it is like a recipe. I tell them to imagine we are baking bread that needs flour. And we have all the other ingredients but no flour. Suddenly, the flour becomes most important even though it alone will not do. This is a way to think about experience in the classroom. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 181

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘passion of experience’ as bodily knowledge inscribed through suffering, curtailed from full voice at a distance.
• XREF: Connects to standpoint epistemology themes in Harding and feminist science-studies material on the reader’s shelf. — connects to: Suffering inscribes a bodily knowledge that resists transmission from a distance. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 181; Pain partially constitutes the body’s epistemological and moral status. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 447

Broader Connections

• Pain partially constitutes the body’s epistemological and moral status. #expands (0.88) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 447
• Suffering inscribes a bodily knowledge that resists transmission from a distance. #expands (0.82) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 181