My writing does not claim a definitive answer—nor could it. Chronic pain resists containment. Its instability is not a theoretical failure, but a reflection of pain’s own shifting, context-dependent nature.
No single model, medical, social, or otherwise, can fully account for the contradictions it carries. Within the limits of cognitive bandwidth and page constraints, I’ve offered a personal and theoretically grounded account of pain’s liminality—situated in, but not reducible to, my own positionality.
Through misfitting, complex embodiment, and Buddhist philosophy, I’ve shown how disablement emerges not as a static category, but as a relational process: shaped by bodyminds, environments, and the meanings we make from them.
If this writing offers anything, it is a call to sit with the uncertainty of pain, to recognize that instability is not a failure, but an invitation.
Full series:
Intro
Positionality
A Personal Case Study in Disablement
Tensions With the Medical Model
Struggling With the Social Model
Misfitting and Complex Embodiment
Bringing in Buddhism
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