Pain Sense: Nociception, Affect and the Visual Encounter

Abstract

This paper explores the qualities of pain as visual, sensory, affective and neurophysiological experience. The early twentieth century neuroscience of Charles Sherrington on “nociception” (the perception of pain) and more recent empirical work on empathy and mirror neurons are read through Deleuzian influenced theories of affect to offer a new understanding of pain as visual or sensory encounter. I argue here that nociception describes the biomediation of force, sensation, affect and information that constitutes the productive ecology within which any aversive encounter occurs, including those of our media and audio-visual environments.