Entangled and Estranged: Living and Dying in Relation (to Cancer)

Abstract

Serious illness has typically been explored as emergent within the relatively linear unfolding of the steady march of time. Here, focusing on cancer and drawing on the accounts of patient/carer dyads, we propose a relational ontology of the affective and temporal entanglements of living-with disease. Emphasising the iterative intra-activity of vital matter and social meaning as they are repatterned across time, we examine the enfolding of various temporal, affective and normative dis/continuities that become particularly meaningful – or are made to matter – in the context of living/dying-with cancer. We focus on the social practices of ‘making memories’, ‘anticipating absence’ and ‘maintaining normal’ which reveal the entanglement of seemingly discrete categories such as self and other, here and gone, and past, present and future. Living-with cancer thus emerges as more than an illness/caring experience, but rather as instructive in contributing to a relational understanding of everyday life.