A tribe has two concepts, akin to our “pain.” One is applied where there is visible damage and is linked with tending, pity, etc. The other is used for stomach-ache for example, and is tied up with mockery of anyone who complains.

In order to qualify as illegal torture, physical pain “must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death,” – a legal memo authorizing abuse [and torture] of prisoners approved by George W. Bush, primarily authored by John Yoo.

And she cried out a sharp, piercing cry . . .

So the simple opposition between logical animals and phonic animals is in no way the given on which politics is then based . . . The logos is . . . the account by which a sonorous emission is understood as speech, capable of enunciating what is just, whereas some other emission is merely perceived as a noise signaling pleasure or pain, consent or revolt.