Ehlers, Nadine
Krupar, Shiloh
Article History
Accepted: 7 June 2021
First Online: 10 September 2021
Endnotes
: <sup>1</sup> Other representations of cancer as monster appear, for instance, in the novel, <i>A Monster Calls</i> (Ness,CitationRef removed).<sup>2</sup> For a general overview of ‘freakery’ and freak discourse, see Garland-Thompson (CitationRef removed).<sup>3</sup> We use the term <i>ontology</i> here to refer to the ‘nature’ of being or what exists. Necessarily, however, we do not presuppose there is a ‘truth’ to this ‘nature’ of being, but instead use the word to mark how certain ways of being or forms of existence are discursively framed (for instance, within biomedicine) or subjectively experienced (and here experience must also be understood as always-already fashioned through socio-cultural processes of meaning-making).<sup>4</sup> This is addressed below. Cancer exceeds the boundaries of what we know as life, because it develops when the cell growth and division essential for life neglects all growth control mechanisms and the cells themselves lack the “differentiated, specialized traits of their ancestors” (Varmus and Weinberg cited in Stacey,CitationRef removed, 80). Undifferentiated, these cells do not have the representative characteristics of other cells of the organ that houses them, and they replicate until they outnumber healthy cells.<sup>5</sup> Also see Shildrick’s chapter ‘The Self’s Clean and Proper Body’ (CitationRef removed, 48-67).<sup>6</sup> According to Kristeva, the life/death dyad most clearly registers at the sight of the corpse: “[c]orpses <i>show me</i> what I permanently thrust aside in order to live. These bodily fluids, this defilement, this shit are what life withstands, hardly and with difficulty, on the part of death” (CitationRef removed, 2).<sup>7</sup> See, for instance, Broom and Kavanagh (CitationRef removed) and Yadlon (CitationRef removed).<sup>8</sup> ShildrickCitationRef removed; CohenCitationRef removed.<sup>9</sup> BRCA1 (located on chromosome 17 and BRCA2 (chromosome 13) belong to a class of genes known as tumor suppressors; in normal cells, BRCA1 and 2 help ensure the stability of the cell’s genetic material and help prevent uncontrolled cell growth. A recent study estimated that about 72% of women who inherit a harmful BRCA1 mutation and about 69% of women who inherit a harmful BRCA2 mutation will develop breast cancer by the age of eighty. The study also estimated that about 44% of women who inherit a harmful BRCA1 mutation and about 17% of women who inherit a harmful BRCA2 mutation will develop ovarian cancer by the age of eighty (see Kuchenbaecker, Hopper, Barnes, et al.,CitationRef removed).<sup>10</sup> However, not every woman in families that carry the mutations, and not every cancer in such families, is linked to one of the BRCA genes. Furthermore, not every woman who has a harmful BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation will develop breast and/or ovarian cancer. For more on the controversial patent rights case, see Matloff and Caplan (CitationRef removed).<sup>11</sup> On IVF gene selection and preimplantation genetic diagnosis see Mohney (CitationRef removed), Bitran (CitationRef removed), andExternalRef removed(n.d).<sup>12</sup> See Ehlers and Krupar (CitationRef removed).<sup>13</sup> The body is generally absent to consciousness when it is in a state of health (LederCitationRef removed). If detected, however, cancer rules out the possibility of the body remaining absent and instead it becomes a highly present reality.<sup>14</sup> This is killing in order to ‘make live,’ a biomedical imperative that produces a range of specific forms of abjection.<sup>15</sup> To take this a step further, for Arthur Frank, “chemotherapy fits with disturbing ease into Elaine Scarry’s definition of torture as ‘unmaking the world’” (in GubarCitationRef removed, 653).<sup>16</sup> Many patients on the community forums ofExternalRef removed(one of our major ethnography sites in previous studies) describe the sensation of the drug in the veins as simultaneously ice-cold and burning.<sup>17</sup> Also see Segelov (CitationRef removed) and Schirrmacher (CitationRef removed).<sup>18</sup> See ABC News (CitationRef removed).<sup>19</sup> Stacey states that her “body would remember the traumas of treatment. The trigger may have been an association of somatic sensation with place, taste, or sound” (CitationRef removed, 100).<sup>20</sup> See Ehlers (CitationRef removed) and Lorde who, for instance, asks: “how do I live with myself one-breasted? What posture do I take, literally, with my physical self?” ([1980]CitationRef removed, 47).<sup>21</sup> See Dumas (CitationRef removed).<sup>22</sup> Importantly, we need to recognize how this disease ravages particular populations, communities, and bodies, with a particular genocidal impact on women of color. See U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group (CitationRef removed).