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Remembering Pain Otherwise: Disability, Enclosed Surfacing, and Crip Memory.
Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal
|July 6, 2026
Summary
This paper explores chronic pain
Area of Science:
- Disability Studies
- Phenomenology
- Chronic Pain Research
Background:
- Chronic pain is often excluded from disability studies or pathologized as solely a bodily issue.
- Existing frameworks struggle to capture the subjective experience of chronic pain.
- Tensions arise from the disconnect between lived experiences of pain and academic discourse.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine the exclusion and bodily framing of chronic pain in disability studies.
- To articulate a phenomenology of chronic pain as "enclosed surfacing."
- To develop "crip memory" as a method for understanding and relating to pain differently.
Main Methods:
- Phenomenological analysis of chronic pain experiences.
- Conceptual development of "enclosed surfacing" and "crip memory."
- Narrative exploration of memory's role in mediating pain.
Main Results:
- Chronic pain can be phenomenologically experienced as an "enclosed surfacing," a contained bodily sensation.
- "Crip memory" offers a method to attend to pain as relational, transmitted across time and space.
- Memory functions as a practice that keeps pain in relation, countering its enclosure.
Conclusions:
- Rethinking chronic pain through "enclosed surfacing" and "crip memory" challenges its individualistic and bodily framing.
- "Crip memory" facilitates attending to pain as a shared, transmissible experience.
- "Crip accompaniment" emerges as a practice of collective support and survival, oriented toward disabled futures.
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