398 RüdigerKunow
this day, not all cancers can be cured, in spite of enormous advances in
researchandtherapy,especiallyconcerningviralformsofcancer.
Actually, it is incorrect(medically atleast) to speak of cancer in the
singular; cancerswould be more appropriate because there are multiple
cancerous processes afflicting the human body, and they have widely
different etiologies (which is one of the reasons why cancer cures are
hardtofind).Theestablishedcoinage,cancerinthesingular,reflectsthe
overawing social and cultural presence, the fear and loathing associated
with cell-growth running amok (which is what cancers are,
biologically).^90 From a cultural-critical point of view, such synthesizing
marks the site of an opening where the personaland corporealenterthe
publicdomainunderthedoublesignatureofemergenceandemergency.
Cancer may be seen as asilentkiller, but, actually, both the disease
andthemedicalresponsetoitspeak.Theyturnhumanbeingsrigorously
into signs, signs whose meaning for the most part remain elusive.
Elusive is an important designator in this context because it is a
sometimes overlooked fact that the phenomenology of ambivalent
cancer signatures haunts its victims with temporality. Not only does the
disease impose inexorable limits on the human life span. It also has a
characteristicmodusoperandi,workingwithdeferral,sothatsomeofits
signs are only becoming visible, or are interpreted correctly, when it is
already too late for a cure. This deferral has remained a stable
component of cultural cancer scripts in spite of new early detection
procedureswhichhavesignificantlyincreasedsurvivalrates.
Canceris,asamedicalexpertandcancerresearcherputit,"adisease
of symbols" (Mukherjee 439), whose semiotics is not only addressed to
patient or doctor. Cancer itself is a semiotic system with "cascades of
aberrant signals, originating in mutant genes, fanned out within the
cancer cell, promoting [its] survival... sustaining cancer's life" (388)
while undermining that of the patient. Once detected, its presence
quickly and insistently produces further semiotics, signifying processes
of a secondary status, signs on the body's surface to be read (at times
mistakenly) as signs of what is going on inside. In her diary, Barbara
(^90) This is of course itself a culturalistic analalogy. I owe many of the insights
into both, the medical and cultural sides of cancer, to Siddartha Mukherjee's
captivating biography of cancer. Susan Gubar's new bookReadingandWriting
Cancer:HowWordsHeal(2016)cametoolatetomynoticetobeincludedhere.