The Cultural Discourses of Breast Cancer Narratives
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
0/-*/&4637&: *ODPMMBCPSBUJPOXJUI6OHMVFJU XFIBWFTFUVQBTVSWFZ POMZUFORVFTUJPOT UP MFBSONPSFBCPVUIPXPQFOBDDFTTFCPPLTBSFEJTDPWFSFEBOEVTFE 8FSFBMMZWBMVFZPVSQBSUJDJQBUJPOQMFBTFUBLFQBSU $-*$,)&3& "OFMFDUSPOJDWFSTJPOPGUIJTCPPLJTGSFFMZBWBJMBCMF UIBOLTUP UIFTVQQPSUPGMJCSBSJFTXPSLJOHXJUI,OPXMFEHF6OMBUDIFE ,6JTBDPMMBCPSBUJWFJOJUJBUJWFEFTJHOFEUPNBLFIJHIRVBMJUZ CPPLT0QFO"DDFTTGPSUIFQVCMJDHPPE Mammographies Mammographies The Cultural Discourses of Breast Cancer Narratives Mary K. DeShazer The University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2013 All rights reserved This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid- free paper 2016 2015 2014 2013 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Pu blication Data DeShazer, Mary K. Mammographies : the cultural discourses of breast cancer narratives / Mary K. DeShazer. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 0- 472- 11882- 3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978- 0- 472- 02923- 5 (e- book) 1. Breast—R adiography—Cr oss-c ultural studies. 2. Breast— Imaging—Cr oss-c ultural studies. 3. Ethnicity—H ealth aspects. 4. Transcultural medical care. I. Title. RG493.5.R33D47 2013 618.1'907572— dc23 2013000021 In memory of my beloved friends Lynda Hart Billy McClain Dolly A. McPherson Elizabeth Phillips Acknowledgments Since I could never have written a book about postmillennial representa- tions of breast cancer without the creative visions of the writers, photog- raphers, and scholars whose work I analyze in Mammographies, I must first express my gratitude to them for providing me with inspiration. I am indebted to Wake Forest University for awarding me an R. J. Rey- nolds Faculty Research Leave in 2008– 9, during which I conducted much of my research for this study, and an Archie Grant to visit the Jo Spence Memorial Archive in London in 2011. I am grateful to curator Terry Den- nett for his assistance at the archive. My colleagues at Wake Forest have been generous in their support; I especially thank English Department Chair Scott Klein and Associate Chair Dean Franco, Women’s and Gen- der Studies Director Wanda Balzano, Rian Bowie, Anne Boyle, Andrew Ettin, Shannon Gilreath, Claudia Kairoff, Mary Martin Niepold, Gillian Overing, Erica Still, Olga Valbuena, and retired colleagues Nancy Cotton, Bob Shorter, and Eva Rodtwitt. For reading my work-in- progress, special thanks go to Anita Helle at Oregon State University, Catherine Keller at Drew University, Patrick Moran at Princeton University, and my WFU transnational feminist theory group: Sally Barbour, Sandya Hewamanne, Catherine Harnois, Judith Madera, and Alessandra Beasley Von Burg. I also appreciate the kindness of WGS administrative coordinators Linda Mecum and Pat Gardea and English Department administrative coordi- nators Peggy Barrett and Connie Green. Many dear friends have been cheering me on for years, and I am grate- ful to have them in my life: Sarah Lu Bradley, E. J. Essic, Gary Ljungquist, Patti Patridge, Inzer Byers, and Rose Simon in North Carolina; Cath- erine Paul, Sean Scuras, Susan Hilligoss, Kathie Heinz, Donna Reiss, and Art Young in South Carolina; Sandra and Alan Bryant in Kentucky; Su- san Carlson, Jane Mead, Monza Naff, and Sharon Ellison in the Bay Area; Martha Kierstead, Cathy Simard, and Nancy Winbigler in Oregon; and Ana Manzanas and Jesús Benito in Salamanca. My family has provided emotional sustenance as well, and I deeply appreciate my siblings, Kathy DeShazer, Sam DeShazer, and Bettye Grogan; my stepdaughter, Sasha Oberbeck; my daughter- in- spirit, Kim Kessaris; my stepsons, Evan Ja- cobi and Andrew Jacobi; and my wonderful husband, Martin Jacobi. I viii acknowledgments thank our niece, Megan Brownell, for sharing her own eloquent cancer blog in 2012. And I remain grateful to my late parents, Marian and Henry DeShazer, for all they gave me. Hearty thanks are due to LeAnn Fields, my editor at the University of Michigan Press, and to her assistant, Alexa Ducsay, for their assistance with this project. I also appreciate the support of the coeditors of journal issues in which my research was published: Jane E. Schultz and Martha Stoddard Holmes, who edited the “Cancer Stories” special issue of Lit- erature and Medicine, and Nadine Ehlers and Shiloh Krupar, who edited “The Body in Breast Cancer” special issue of Social Semiotics. An earlier version of the first chapter of this book, “Postmillennial Breast Cancer Photo- narratives: Technologized Terrain,” was published in Social Semiotics 22, no. 1 (February 2012): 13– 30, and is reprinted by permission of the publisher, Taylor & Francis Ltd., http://www.tand fonline.com. An earlier version of chapter 6, “Cancer Narratives and an Ethics of Commemoration: Susan Sontag, Annie Leibovitz, and David Rieff,” was published in Literature and Medicine 28, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 215–36, and is reprinted by permission of the publisher, The Johns Hop- kins University Press. Contents Introduction: Representing Breast Cancer in the Twenty- first Century 1 1 | Postmillennial Breast Cancer Photo- narratives: Technologized Terrain 17 2 | Audre Lorde’s Successors: Breast Cancer Narratives as Feminist Theory 40 3 | Narratives of Prophylactic Mastectomy: Mapping the Breast Cancer Gene 66 4 | Rebellious Humor in Breast Cancer Narratives: Deflating the Culture of Optimism 92 5 | New Directions in Breast Cancer Photography: Documenting Women’s Post- operative Bodies 119 6 | Cancer Narratives and an Ethics of Commemoration: Susan Sontag, Annie Leibovitz, and David Rieff 156 7 | Bodies, Witness, Mourning: Reading Breast Cancer Autothanatography 175 Afterword: What Remains 195 Appendix: Links to Selected Breast Cancer Websites and Blogs 205 Notes 207 Works Cited 219 Index 229 Introduction Representing Breast Cancer in the Twenty- first Century Ovarian surgery was only part of the solution. What about breast cancer? . We couldn’t turn our backs on what we knew. We still had our family history, even if it was different from the one we thought we knew. —Amy Boesky, What We Have For these young women, having their portrait taken seems to represent their personal victory over this terrifying disease. Through these simple pictures, they seem to gain acceptance of what has happened to them and the strength to move forward with pride. —David Jay, The SCAR Project Narratives that explore women’s lived experience of breast cancer and interrogate its cultural discourses provide the focus of my study, which offers a critical analysis of postmillennial autobiographical and photo- graphic representations of this life-t hreatening illness. In the texts under consideration, memoirists and photo-a utobiographers probe the ravages of a still mystifying disease, confront ambivalently its surgical and phar- maceutical treatments, document the physical and psychological pro- cesses of recovery, and memorialize the dead. Breast cancer narratives published in the United States and Great Britain since 2000 differ from their twentieth- century counterparts in several noteworthy ways. They address previously neglected topics such as the links between cancer and environmental carcinogens, the ethics and efficacy of genetic testing and prophylactic mastectomy, and the shifting politics of prosthesis and reconstruction. They question the medical establishment for emphasiz- ing detection rather than prevention, and challenge mainstream cancer culture for its corporate complicity, pink iconography, upbeat rhetoric, and privileging of philanthropy over activism. They decenter survivor discourse by paying elegiac tribute to the often invisible women who die each year of this disease— to their wounded, suffering bodies and the loss that they instantiate. As catalysts and sites of public memory, these 2 Mammographies illness narratives engage readers and viewers politically, ethically, and aesthetically. Since the publication of my 2005 study of late twentieth-cen tury lit- erary representations of breast, uterine, and ovarian cancers, Fractured Borders: Reading Women’s Cancer Literature, I have been considering a constellation of issues related to breast cancer and postmillennial liter- ary and visual cultures. This book departs from my previous study and from other scholarship on illness narratives in its exclusive focus on breast cancer, its analysis of both memoirs and photographic narratives, its attention to collaborative and hybrid narratives, and its emphasis on ecological, queer, genetic, transnational, and anti-p ink discourses. I ar- gue that, taken together, postmillennial breast cancer narratives, which I refer to as mammographies, constitute a distinctive testimonial and memorial tradition whose aims and representational strategies should circulate alongside other cultural projects of memory such as the AIDS memorial quilt (the Names Project). The term mammographies signifies both the technology of imaging by which most Western women learn that they have contracted breast cancer and the documentary impera- tive that drives their written and visual mappings of the breast cancer experience. In the United States alone more than 225,000 women are