Corps malades et corps guéris

• Main Author: Tiphaine Godfroid
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université Catholique de Louvain 2019-09-01
• Series: Recherches Sociologiques et Anthropologiques
• Subjects: cancer; remission; medical-administrative and biographical temporalities; identificatory work
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/rsa/3310

Based on analysis of the discourses and experiences of women affected by a cancer and of health professionals, the article focuses on how the medical techniques (diagnostic, curative, risk measurement) produce new institutional and biographical temporalities which, on the one hand, are matched by particular powers, but which, on the other hand, also encourage singular forms of subjectifications. In particular, it shows the extent to which “remission” creates ontological uncertainties (the individual is no longer sick but is not cured) and sometimes embodies contradictory normative expectations (to go on living “as before” all the while “keeping an eye on my-self”). It also underlines the extent to which this categorial instability resonates in the individual biographies when the women engage in the intense work of negotiating their bonds and social roles to make their relatives recognize their physical and psychological transformations due to the disease and the treatments administered.