Affirmative Embodied Experience Matters: (Mis)Understanding and Representation in Digital Cancer Narratives

Affirmative Embodied Experience Matters: (Mis)Understanding and Representation in Digital Cancer Narratives

Jilu Jose Devasia and Lal CA

Abstract

Digital affordances reconfigure the perception of illness, revealing the cultural construction of embodied experiences. Though precarity and fragility deepen our understanding of cancer, the susceptibility to generate blame and misunderstanding reinforces panic in the afflicted. Self-blame subjugates individuals, perpetuating fear through falsified experiences and fabricated realities that homogenise personal experience of illness. Moreover, the manipulation of technomedicine to disseminate false hope and knowledge is significant. Conversely, digital narratives subsume shame, stigma, and silence and promote posthuman subjectivity, enabling fluidity in experience. The post-pandemic phase has opened up diverse platforms across media to articulate, interact, and convert one’s feelings and emotions; social media platforms, WhatsApp groups, online blogs, and YouTube channels promote effective conversations. The tendency for an evidence-based understanding of disease remains dominant and illness marginalised; the concept of ‘immunitas’ emphasises biomedical discourses as indispensable and coercive control diplomatic. Drawing on select narrative accounts from TEDx and Advertisements, the article examines how digital cancer narratives affirm the lived experience, reclaim agency, and negotiate the interplay between power and knowledge. The reconfiguration of power dynamics provides inclusivity and relationality.