420 RüdigerKunow
same as cancer (as is repeatedly suggested in capitalist-critical sites).
The comparison might furthermore be used to make the point that the
economic configurations of our time do in fact cause cancer. And
indeed,the unequal distribution of life chances under capitalism can be
mapped on the statistics of cancer victims, as the rates for certain kinds
of cancer among the various ethnicities in the U.S. may show. These
figures moreover remind us of the relentless political dimensions ofthe
disease,onwhichLordealsoinsisted.^116
The various comparisons and analogies, whatever their explanatory
merits,nonethelesstestifyto"theintensetrafficofideasbetweenrecent
theoretical biology and neoliberal rhetorics of economic growth" (M.
Cooper,LifeasSurplus20),atrafficthatwithoutdoubtisintensifiedby
a fact commented on at some length above in this book, namely the
increasing commercialization and commodification of the biological
building blocks of human life (see the discussions of the
technologization of biology and the pressures of a market-conforming
body). In this context, the fact that the registers used to describe the
workings of the current, neo-liberal dispensation are in many ways the
same as those describing the workings of cancer is an as yet
underexploredandundertheorizedculturalitem ofnosmallimport.The
epistemic plausibility of such an established metaphorical use rests on
the fact that one can indeed identify ashared operational logicwhich
organizesandenergizesbothcancerandthe(neoliberal)economy.Both
capitalism and cancer are structures based on expansion, an expansion
that cannot exist without the prospect of unlimited, unregulated,
uncheckedgrowth.But,astheetiologyofcancershowsandeconomists
have likewise noted, growth per se has never been benevolent
(Leonhardt n. pag.) and while the economy may be fit for limitless
growth,thehumancertainlyisnot.
(^116) The most obvious example is the disproportionate rate of prostate cancer
amongAfricanAmericanmales,notedfromaculturalcrititicalpointofviewby
Holloway(83-90).