CorporealSemiotics:TheBodyoftheText/theTextoftheBody 405
comfort" (62), the softening illusions by which U.S. society and culture
are trying to re-semanticize the breast cancer experience—incidentally
in much the same way that impairments are recoded as presenting new
challenges and opportunities for the individual.The Cancer Journals'
cultural cachet astherepresentative cancer text (together with Susan
Sontag'sIllness as Metaphor, discussed below) derives not only from
Lorde's rhetorical skills (emphasized by Olson) in writing about her
physicalandemotionalpain—"Onthemorningofthethirdday,thepain
returned home bringing all of its kinfolk" (37)—but also from its
insistence that cancer is not only an individual hardship but at the same
time also a collective encounter, "a black lesbian feminist experience"
(23). As Kissam Morris notes, "[t]he issues associated with one's
existence in a black body—the emotional and material destructiveness
of racism—are intensified by one's existence in a female body.. ."
(170).
To make transparent how an extreme medical condition is at the
sametimeasocialandculturalpathology,Lordeseeks"tobuildawider
construct. That is an important function of the telling of experience"
(54). Lorde's insistent contextualization is both a political and a
theoretical gesture, political because Lorde views herself less as a
passive victim than as a "warrior" in the battlefield of cancer (34, 61),
with a "militant responsibility" (75) to combat the spurious attempts by
the medical establishment^102 and by society at large to cajole women
into conformity with male, heteronormative ideals. From the very
beginning, her own private battle against the illness that would
eventually take her life is interlaced with multiple public battles in
whichLordealsoengages,especiallyagainstracism,sexism,andlackof
(^102) This aspect has been emphasized by Kissam Morris: "Lorde links the desire
to universalize the experience of breast cancer... with the oppressive
essentializing of the American Medical Association. She makes a point of
writing about precisely those issues that are often considered inappropriate
topics for public discussion in American society: her own fear of disfigurement
and death, others' fear of cancer and disinclination to hear her talk about it, her
refusal— considered unthinkable by the medical community—to wear a
prosthesis, and her use of masturbation in the process of recovery. Writing
openlyaboutherfear,anger,pain,anddetermination,Lordechallengestheright
oftheAMAtosilenceanddefine her"(175-76).