Performing illness and health: the humanistic value of cancer narratives

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Periodical article

Title:	Performing illness and health: the humanistic value of cancer narratives
Author:	Naidu, Maheshvari
Year:	2012
Periodical:	Anthropology Southern Africa (ISSN 2332-3264)
Volume:	35
Issue:	3-4
Pages:	71-80
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	cancer patients women body
Abstract:	Cancer is a potent example of a disease that grips and plays out on the body in ways that are both visceral and visual. This paper explores issues of disease and disorder, functioning and malfunctioning in bodies marked by cancer and a sense of non-belonging. By working through the heuristic device of 'narrative', it argues for the humanistic value and currency of the personal (subjective) illness narrative in social science scholarship in being able to convey to audiences the emotional and existential complexities of cancer, beyond the merely medical. By drawing on ethnographic narratives of a small group of South African women with cancer and their inscriptive treatment practices, the author probes the shifting and constructed concepts of a so-called 'healthy' body and 'ill' body as experienced by the women, and shows that a recognition of these experiences of the physical body is potentially able to contribute to shaping more compassionate, person-centred health care models of illness and healing. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]