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Depending on how we look at cancer, cancer can mean different things. We might think of cancer in biological terms (e.g. as cells that divide too quickly), or in population terms (e.g. statistics about incidence), or in personal terms (e.g. our symptoms and feelings, or part of our professional work), or with a focus on fund raising campaigns and television adverts, to mention a few examples. To some anthropologists and feminist theorists, however, cancer is also culture. The American anthropologist S. Lochlann Jain, for example, understands cancer in this way. But what does it mean to say that cancer is culture?<\/p>\n
In their book Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us,<\/em> S. Lochlann Jain (2013) describes cancer as \u2018a conglomeration of interests\u2019. What they mean is that cancer is many things and can be known in different ways. Yet, they also observe that knowledge around cancer tends to be split between the \u2018objective scientific\u2019 knowledge of cancer and the \u2018subjective experimental\u2019 knowledge of cancer, e.g. a split is often made between studies in oncology vs. personal memoir or a split between doctors\u2019 experiences of cancer vs. patients\u2019 experiences of cancer.<\/p>\n Making such a split has consequences, Jain argues. It leads to blind spots in how the disease is understood and treated, and as a consequence, we are led to what they call \u2018pseudo-questions\u2019 such as \u2018how much we as a society should spend on treatments\u2019 or \u2018whether we are winning the war on cancer\u2019.<\/p>\n Instead, Jain explains that because knowledge is necessarily always incomplete \u2013 whether this concerns \u2018objective scientific\u2019 knowledge or \u2018subjective experimental\u2019 knowledge, it makes more sense to see the different forms of knowing cancer as shaping each other and working together. For example, how \u2018health\u2019 and \u2018sickness\u2019 is understood by the medical system may impact not only on how patients themselves experience cancer, but also on what kind of options are available for patients when it comes to treatment and support. Jain therefore argues that it is worth understanding better the notions of health, patienthood, sickness, economics, cause and so on that cancer science and research relies on, since they underwrite not just the social life of living with cancer, but also actual treatment options (Jain and Stacey 2015: 12).<\/p>\n Another example from Jain\u2019s book of how different forms of knowing cancer become intertwined is the experience of time. While some cancer researchers tend to understand cancer as progressive and linear through their work on the aggregated, abstract and predictable bodies of statistics, patients may not experience cancer in this way. Rather patients may instead experience cancer as non-chronological and what Jain refers to as living in \u2018prognostic time\u2019 (Jain 2007). They describe this as \u2018living in the folds of various representations of time\u2019 (Jain 2007: 80), which means living in the past, present and future all at the same time. Experiencing time in this way is then very different to the focus on progress and the survivor figure present in survival statistics, offering instead \u2018an uneasy alternative, one that inhabits contradiction, confusion and betrayal\u2019 (Jain 2007: 90).<\/p>\n Yet, the dominant way of understanding time as linear and progressive carries with it certain ways of approaching cancer, Jain argues. For example, Jain writes that the focus on survival statistics tends to result in campaigns for early detection of cancer, e.g. the offering of screening or detection of biomarkers through blood tests. And while this is very well, it nonetheless tends to side-line, they argue, the equally as important concern of prevention. Consequently, other possible cancer causes (not just biomedical), e.g. chemical, environmental, or demographic tend to be obscured, they argue.<\/p>\n To challenge the ways in which cancer is represented and understood, Jain therefore turns their attention to what they call \u2018the cancer complex\u2019. Here, cancer is not only a biomedical disease or a personal tragedy, but so much more \u2013 it is made up of law, science, progress, profit, environment, time and lifespan to mention a few domains that on their own are unable to address \u2018the multiple and constantly shifting uncertainties that we consolidate with the word \u2018cancer\u2019\u2019 (Jain and Stacey 2015: 3).<\/p>\n Addressing the cancer complex, Jain argues, is a way to open up things rather than offering any clear answers. This might sit uncomfortably with some, but Jain\u2019s point is exactly that it is important to recognise that cancer exists in a space of uncertainty. Cancer is complex and elusive. Not only may many people diagnosed with cancer feel that they are thrown into what the feminist cultural theorist Jackie Stacey calls \u2018a place of ontological uncertainty\u2019, where you enter a \u2018confusing and unwelcome world\u2019 (Jain and Stacey 2015), the \u2018cancer complex\u2019 is itself an uncertain terrain, where cancer \u2018works for\u2019 different interests in ways that can be difficult to grasp and make sense of.<\/p>\n Yet, by analysing this \u2018cancer complex\u2019 and understanding cancer as culture, we are offered a way to \u2018demystify [cancer] as a way of understanding the work it does for different interests\u2019 (Jain and Stacey 2015), e.g. what cancer does for law or medicine or the economy. By opening up the question of what cancer is and how we know it, Jain argues, is then to \u2018address, interrogate and offer ways to bridge the vast chasm between modes of experience for doctors and patients and how these experiences situate knowledge claims\u2019 (Jain and Stacey 2015: 12).<\/p>\n To take from Jain\u2019s work is then the important insight that \u2018cancer is a communal event as much as an individual disease\u2019 (Jain and Stacey 2015: 6).<\/p>\n References:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Depending on how we look at cancer, cancer can mean different things. We might think of cancer in biological terms (e.g. as cells that divide too quickly), or in population terms (e.g. statistics about incidence), or in personal terms (e.g. our symptoms and feelings, or part of our professional work), or with a focus on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/gynae-cancer-narratives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/gynae-cancer-narratives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/gynae-cancer-narratives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/gynae-cancer-narratives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/gynae-cancer-narratives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/gynae-cancer-narratives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":265,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/gynae-cancer-narratives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions\/265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/gynae-cancer-narratives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/gynae-cancer-narratives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/gynae-cancer-narratives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n