Hurt and Words: On Language and Pain in Public

This blog post is part of issue 125 of Feminist Review, which explores theories of the archive within feminist, queer, crip, decolonial, and diasporic studies. The issue, which brings academics, artists, and archivists into conversation with each other, launched in July 2020. Blog posts in this series can be found here. While writing this piece, I had a flare up, or a relapse, of extreme pain (in fact, two relapses); words that inadequately describe what is more akin to a bomb exploding inside of you. And I thought: My god—I would be so enraged if someone told me not to describe this pain as the searingness it is, the stabbing knives, for hours on end, days. In previous years, for months. Brutality that fragments all sense of space, time, speech and even self.