{"title":"The Afterlife of Breast Cancer: Exploring the Digital Performativity of Post-Treatment Patienthood","authors":"N. Gupta","doi":"10.1177/09732586211048243","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article looks at the practices of digital performativity of bodies-in-remission on Instagram to detail the affective and temporal experience of post-treatment patienthood. To explore these performativities, I use the images and narratives of the post-treatment breast-cancer body to have a conversation about the vicarious ‘re-experience’ of the malady—now in abeyance—through the discursive register of fear and the clinical haunting of the everyday in trying to offset the side-effects of the treatment regimes. I further argue that these techno-digital enactments of post-treatment patienthood co-emerge through complex ‘intra-actions’ of and within entanglements of materialities, networks, discourses, affect, and multiple registers of techno-social mediation that shape and constrict them. Accordingly, this article is an effort to make sense of how people ‘memorise’ chronic illness and prolonged suffering—especially when it impacts key sources of their gender identity—through negotiations with the temporal-discursive processes of networked communications.","PeriodicalId":43888,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Creative Communications","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Creative Communications","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09732586211048243","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
This article looks at the practices of digital performativity of bodies-in-remission on Instagram to detail the affective and temporal experience of post-treatment patienthood. To explore these performativities, I use the images and narratives of the post-treatment breast-cancer body to have a conversation about the vicarious ‘re-experience’ of the malady—now in abeyance—through the discursive register of fear and the clinical haunting of the everyday in trying to offset the side-effects of the treatment regimes. I further argue that these techno-digital enactments of post-treatment patienthood co-emerge through complex ‘intra-actions’ of and within entanglements of materialities, networks, discourses, affect, and multiple registers of techno-social mediation that shape and constrict them. Accordingly, this article is an effort to make sense of how people ‘memorise’ chronic illness and prolonged suffering—especially when it impacts key sources of their gender identity—through negotiations with the temporal-discursive processes of networked communications.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Creative Communications promotes inquiry into contemporary communication issues within wider social, economic, marketing, cultural, technological and management contexts, and provides a forum for the discussion of theoretical and practical insights emerging from such inquiry. The journal encourages a new language of analysis for contemporary communications research and publishes articles dealing with innovative and alternate ways of doing research that push the frontiers of conceptual dialogue in communication theory and practice. The journal engages with a wide range of issues and themes in the areas of cultural studies, digital media, media studies, technoculture, marketing communication, organizational communication, communication management, mass and new media, and development communication, among others. JOCC is a double blind peer reviewed journal.