Abstract

Exploring the ontological dimension of suffering can shed light on why and how social configurations seek to constitute its experience and role. Contending against these, which describe contemporary society as tending towards the eradication of suffering, I argue that suffering is both a dialectical consequence of its hedonic mechanisms and an actively instrumentalized and commodified phenomenon. Understanding suffering as an affective attunement in the Heideggerian sense, a pre-reflective state that shapes our being-in-the-world, displays the interrelation of the social, ontological, and epistemic dimensions of suffering, while contributing to contemporary discussion on the nature of suffering and its relation to the dissolution of selfhood and agency. Conceiving suffering in this manner allows us to understand it as a prized commodity for power, since to shape suffering is to shape horizons of sense and relation.