Managing the Unmanageable: Identity Craftwork and Collective Healing in the Aftermath of Breast Cancer

Abstract

Breast cancer is one of the most culturally visible diseases in the contemporary United States, leading to cultural norms about identity and healing. Through semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and ethnographic engagement, this thesis examines how women engage with two dominant cultural norms: the breast cancer “survivor” label and the support group. The primary interlocutors are women who have had breast cancer, including those involved with institutions and those who are not. Subject-position theories, narrative theory, and religion theory are frameworks through which I analyze how women respond to life after breast cancer in intentional, multifaceted ways. The “survivor” label is a subject-position within the breast cancer discourse. Thus women’s purposeful engagement with or rejection of “survivor” constitutes both identity craftwork and ethical labor. In the Frauen Care Center (FCC) group, therapeutic emplotment emerged as a collaborative, ongoing narrative construction that created a coherent, collective narrative to navigate life after diagnosis. Further, a comparison between FCC and North Oncology Institute (NOI) demonstrates that even among breast cancer support groups, there are diverse healing paradigms. Through religion theory, I frame these groups as symbol systems with ritualistic structure and a shared doctrine of communal healing–as two sects of the same secular healing religion. Ultimately, this thesis challenges the rigidity of dominant cultural norms and underscores the varied, purposeful ways women engage in identity craftwork and communal healing in the aftermath of breast cancer, undertaking the labor of managing the unmanageable.