the Female Body GOVERNING

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samantha king
The optimism of the survivor celebrations, the focus on cure-oriented
science, and the fund-raising goals of the Race for the Cure are thus
mutually reinforcing. One 51-year-old Army officer and breast cancer
survivor made this link explicit when she said of the race:
It gives people a way to actively show their support to fi nd a cure. When
a person just donates money through the mail, they [sic] are unable
to “touch” the results of their [sic] contribution. With the race, the
supporters can be right there with the survivors who represent the
positive aspects of their support through contributions. They can see
the result of the research and new drugs—mothers, grandmothers and
daughters who are still alive to share memories with their families.
(Personal correspondence)
Barbara Ehrenreich (2001) offers a more critical perspective on the
same set of links and warns against the dangers of this approach:
In the overwhelmingly Darwinian culture that has grown up around
breast cancer, martyrs count for little; it is the “survivors” who merit
constant honor and acclaim. They, after all, offer living proof that
expensive and painful treatments may in some cases actually work.
(p. 48)
And of course in some cases they do work. But the voices of the chorus
with faith in cure-oriented science—underwritten by the logic that
“tidal waves” of money allocated to such research will simply overwhelm
the disease (Leopold, 1999b, p. A19)—are growing ever louder. And
in this context, recognizing that all might not be so well in the world
of cancer becomes much harder as does asking questions that might
reshape and redirect dominant approaches to fighting the disease.
Breast Cancer-Related Marketing
While the figure of the healthy, vibrant, honorable breast cancer
survivor functions to maintain interest in and philanthropic support
for cure-oriented science, it has also been widely deployed in the past
decade as a marketing tool through which to sell (mostly) women
concerned about the disease an enormous range of consumer items. An
increasingly competitive domestic marketplace in the past two decades
has seen U.S. corporations focus their attention on retaining, rather
than creating, consumer loyalty for established brands. The emergence
and widespread use of cause-related marketing exemplifies this concern