the Female Body GOVERNING

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samantha king
even imagine a day like today. Sixty-fi ve thousand people turning out
in our nation’s capital to once again race, run, walk, and pray for the
cure. It is coming! It is coming!
A representative from Bristol Myers Squibb Oncology emphasized the
corporation’s commitment to the cause and its faith in cure-oriented
science, “We have come together to form a team to Race for the Cure.
Bristol Myers Squibb continues to believe that by working as a team
to raise awareness and fund research, a cure for this disease can and
will be found.” To a cheering crowd, the volunteer coordinator for
the Komen Foundation declared, “When you think volunteerism, you
think reach out and touch someone, and I just love that model. That
model is the corporate logo of AT&T and they’re a national leader
in volunteerism.” And executive co-chair of the race, Priscilla Mack,
made this explicit when she declared, “With sponsors like these, we
will find a cure!”
Not surprisingly, no questions were asked about—nor even any
mention of—persistently high rates of breast cancer in the United
States or elsewhere. Although the participation of thousands of survivors
should be indicative of these rates, their presence was celebrated as
evidence of the promise of individual struggle against the disease rather
than of a social or medical crisis that kills 40,000 women each year in the
United States alone. Survivors, in other words, stood as symbols of hope
for the future, rather than of urgency in the present. Differences of age,
race, and class in mortality rates—for example, the fact that although
breast cancer mortality rates dropped slightly among all women in the
1990s, rates among Black women continue to rise—were also ignored
or subsumed under the banner of the “survivor.” Moreover, no demands
for action—beyond calls for continued participation in the Race for the
Cure—were made of the various representatives of the cancer industries
or the state, nor indeed of participants in the race.
One could argue, of course, that the Race for the Cure is designed
to raise money (more than $2 million in this instance) and celebrate
survivorship, not to provide a platform for the expression of dissent
as Audre Lorde had envisioned. One could also argue that the United
States needs such celebratory and harmonious public gatherings. But
doing so would be to ignore the implication of the race in a broader
war of position over what constitutes “the problem of breast cancer” in
the present moment and over what kinds of actions and identities are
legitimate or effective in bringing about social change.
Placing the Race for the Cure in the context of the history of cancer
in the United States is helpful here. Faith in the power of positive