The research forum “Paradoxes of Pain: Social, Cultural, and Political Contexts”, organized by the Laboratory for the Study of Philanthropy, Solidarity and Care (SolidCare Lab) at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, is dedicated to analyzing how pain does—or does not—become an object of scientific knowledge, public attention, and institutional intervention.

Although pain is one of the most universal human experiences, its theoretical and public articulation remains highly selective. Not all forms of pain are equally visible, recognized, or studied. This selectivity is not neutral; rather, it stems from power relations, institutional priorities, regimes of visibility, financial flows, and cultural norms that shape what is constituted as a socially relevant problem and what remains privatized, depoliticized, or normalized. Building on this premise, the forum approaches pain as a multilayered phenomenon situated between experience, representation, and social function. The program is organized into two thematic panels, with internal sessions by mapping different regimes through which pain is produced, interpreted, and politically mediated.

The first panel, Cultural Articulations of Pain, focuses on the ways in which pain is constituted through processes of understanding, empathy, and media representation. Through sessions dedicated to the limits of interpretation, paradoxes of meaning, and media regimes of representation, this segment examines how pain is shaped within the cultural and epistemological frameworks of contemporary societies.

The second panel, Pain as a Social and Political Signal, shifts the analytical focus toward the institutional, legal, and activist dimensions of pain. Through sessions addressing law and responsibility, as well as testimony and social resistance, it explores how pain functions as an indicator of social crises, but also as a potential driver of political articulation, transformation, and demands for accountability.

The forum brings together researchers from the fields of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, law, and media studies, to examine pain not only as an individual experience, but as an affective, epistemological, and political problem—a site where regimes of knowledge, institutional structures, and forms of social visibility intersect, as well as where diverse theoretical frameworks engage with its symbolic, affective, and systemic dimensions.