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Título
The body’s unruly event of illness: (re)orienting the cancer memoir in Anne Boyer’s The Undying
Autor(es)
Materia
Anne Boyer
breast cancer memoir
medical humanities
neoliberalism
illness narratives
Clasificación UNESCO
6202 Teoría, Análisis y Crítica Literarias
Fecha de publicación
2021
Citación
Parra Fernández, L. de la (2021). The body’s unruly event of illness: (re)orienting the cancer memoir in Anne Boyer’s The Undying, Prose Studies, 42(1), 34-52. https://doi.org/10.1080/01440357.2021.1995292
Resumen
[EN]This paper argues that Anne Boyer’s The Undying (2019)
reorients the writing of illness memoirs, in particular the
breast cancer memoir. Thinking of the ill body as a “queer
orientation,” following Sara Ahmed (2006), I analyze how
Boyer reconsiders and attends to different ways of narrating
the ill body going beyond genre conventions. I consider how
Boyer’s memoir assesses the “crisis of care” (Fraser) in contemporary
society as well as the role of the cancer patient in
traditional breast cancer memoirs, where suffering is presented
as a homogenizing experience devoid of sociopolitical
circumstances. I argue that Boyer’s use of (re)orientation
of writing in her illness narrative is key for a different understanding
of breast cancer that fosters collective action for the
redistribution of justice and care.
URI
ISSN
0144-0357
DOI
10.1080/01440357.2021.1995292
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