Pinelopi Tzouva will defend her thesis "Breaking free of cancerland: changing the stories we tell about breast cancer"

On February 11 at 14:00 Pinelopi Tzouva will defend her thesis "Breaking free of cancerland: changing the stories we tell about breast cancer".

 

Supervisors: Prof. Marina Grišakova (University of Tartu), Assoc. Prof. Anneleen Masschelein (KU Leuven)

Opponent: Assoc. Prof Anita Wohlmann (University of Southern Denmark)

 

Venue: Via Zoom (Meeting ID: 984 9013 0981, Passcode: 802062)

 

Summary: In this dissertation, Breaking Free of Cancerland: Changing the Stories We Tell About Breast Cancer, I examine autobiographical narratives written by women with breast cancer in the U.S. These stories, looking at breast cancer from a neoliberal, individualist perspective, constitute a big contemporary cultural phenomenon as well as part of an extensive network (of objects, structures, and meanings) that determines people’s perception of breast cancer and, consequently, what happens or does not happen on a broader level about it. In my research, I found that mainstream breast cancer narratives mostly emphasize survivorship and positive thinking, personal responsibility and heteronormative/middle class values of life. In doing so, they obscure different realities and modes of existence and preclude people from considering different responses to this storytelling epidemic, such that might foreground its links to economic-political interests and circumstances, and elicit more ethical and community-oriented approaches. Alongside my critique of mainstream breast cancer stories and a discussion of various factors that shape them and keep them in currency, I suggest turning to counter-narratives – critical autobiographical breast cancer stories that resist the storytelling pattern of winners’/heroes’ tales. I analyze three such narratives that stood out for me and I look at them in connection to their own specific features and with respect to their activist qualities. I maintain that different stories (not emphasizing coherence and the hero’s self-development, not told from a strictly individualist point of view, not following the instructions of writing courses and manuals on how to write a successful memoir today) can slowly and gradually make the minoritarian voices heard and, over time, lead to more ethical ways of existence.