CorporealSemiotics:TheBodyoftheText/theTextoftheBody 397
Evenso,myexampleshaveshownthatthereisindeedmuchatstakein
their relationship under the (not so auspicious) auspices of pain or
suffering:nothinglessthanthepowersofmimesisandhumancreativity
vis-à-vis extreme, precarious conditions of embodiment. How this
challenge—the pain of representation—is met in a given instance is
certainly less important than the fact that ever new forms of pain
representation have evolved that are manifold and distributed across a
variety of figures—as emphatic "corpo-reality," bodily endowment,
conditio humana, moral lesson, plea for or liminal condition of
communication. And this list is far from complete, but even so, it can
serve as an illustration of the vigorous cultural work performed by
intensely felt, liminal conditions of human physicality. One such,
perhapseventhemostoftendiscussed,conditioniscancer.
3.TheSilentKiller:Cancer(s)
Ofthemanydiseasesaffectingthehumanbody,noneismorefeared
than cancer, at least in the United States of America. Here, cancer is
oftenseenassecretly,eveninsidiously,invadingthebody,unbeknownst
to the victim. It "doesn't knock before it enters" (Sontag,Illness as
Metaphor5);itisa"silentkiller."Thisisofcourseaculturaldiagnosis,
notamedicalone,becausemodernmedicinehasfoundwaystodiscover
the presence of cancerous cells relatively early through technical
imagingorbiopsy.Culturalsemanticshereoverridesmedicalsemiotics.
Thus, the figure of the silent killer is a cultural reaction formation
(Sontag,Illness as Metaphor19), an indication that it is "a personal
thing" that human beings have with cancer.^89 Nobody would think of
peritonitisorintestinalobstructionasanagentwithevilintent.Canceris
different: personified in the image of an assassin, it figures as the "Big
Antagonist." Such a cultural response is no accident; cancer is in many
cases indeed a killer: in 2015, there were an estimated 1.6 million new
cancer cases in the U.S. alone, and about 590,000 deaths. Worldwide,
the latest figures of the WHO list 8.2 million victims to the disease. To
(^89) Part of the explanation for this reaction lies in the psychological difference
between the experience of a sporadic and a chronic disease. Cancer is a disease
thatisinmanycasesadiseasethatstayswithitsvictim.