Paradoxical Wellness
The contents of this category address the ways in which people may experience a disconnect between the perception and actuality of their status as being either “well” or “ill”, whether through the frameworks of anticipatory patienthood, having cancer but not yet knowing it, or some other means.
Works included in this category:
Cancer Before Cancer: Mythologies of Cancer in Everyday Life
Breast Cancer Genes and the Gendering of Knowledge
Surveillance life and the shaping of ‘genetically at risk’ chronicities in Denmark
After The Cure: The Untold Stories of Breast Cancer Survivors
Poison Cures
This category specifically addresses the paradox of chemotherapy, which is simultaneously a deadly poison and a treatment for cancer. Works in this category deal with both the dissonance of being poisoned in order to be cured, and the aftereffects of chemo experienced by those who have been “cured” and are expected to easily return to their normal life.
Works included in this category:
Cancer Rehabilitation in Denmark – The Growth of a New Narrative
After The Cure: The Untold Stories of Breast Cancer Survivors
Problems of Prognosis
Problems of Prognosis deals with the tensions inherent in prognosis. These include the anxieties associated with questions of survivorship versus death, the instrumentalization of others’ illnesses in order to generate predictions, and the ways in which prognosis of both risk and disease fundamentally shape patients identity, expectations, and hope for the future.
Works included in this category:
Surveillance life and the shaping of ‘genetically at risk’ chronicities in Denmark
Surgical Scars
Returning again to questions of survivor identity and the dissonance between being “cured” and being “well”, this category includes work that address the aftermath of surgical interventions.
Works included in this category:
Cancer Rehabilitation in Denmark – The Growth of a New Narrative
Surface Tensions: Surgery, Bodily Boundaries, and the Social Self
Remission and Relapse
This category deals with the tensions of remission. The binaries and gray areas of remission are multi-layered. On one hand, there is an idea that once a cancer occurrence has been successfully treated, that patient is cured. However, although full remission is a cause for celebration and patients are now considered “well”, the possibility of relapse lurks, preventing a return to the state of “good health” the patient previously enjoyed.
Works included in this category:
Cancer Rehabilitation in Denmark – The Growth of a New Narrative
After The Cure: The Untold Stories of Breast Cancer Survivors
Gender and Cancer
There is only one work included in this category– Malignant– but due to the literally nonbinary identity of the author, I felt it was important to discuss this issue. Gender is one of the most basic, core binaries of western biomedicine, yet increasing amounts of research show that a) biological sex and its associated characteristics is much more diverse and varied than we would assume, and b) that the experiences of genderqueer and intersex people in medicine are distinct from those of cisgender people and are made difficult because of gendered assumptions.