Reconstructing the self: breast cancer and the post-surgical body

Crompvoets, Samantha

doi:10.5172/hesr.12.2.137

Cited by 19 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 2 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This feeling of being 'out of sync' is in comparison with other young women without cancer and older breast cancer patients [24,29]. Feeling 'out of sync' connects to issues around reproduction (including pregnancy, fertility, contraception and menopause) [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]; altered body image (primarily relating not only to mastectomised bodies and breast reconstruction but also to more general feelings of being in an altered body and, therefore, changes in embodied subjectivity) [20,[25][26][27]34,[36][37][38][39]; decreased levels of and changes to sexual activities [25][26][27]34,36,38]; and fear (of cancer recurrence, of their own mortality and its potential impact on their families) [ …”

Section: Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While some women choose breast reconstruction as a way of re-gaining a representation of female normality, others opt to establish a new sense of normal by normalising bodily imperfection [39]. Young women perceive that they are not achieving developmentally normative milestones, such as having children, and perceive that having a baby will restore a sense of normalcy in their lives in terms of their femininity and sexuality [23,29].…”

Section: Normalisingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The experiences, needs and concerns of younger women with breast cancer: a meta‐ethnography

et al. 2011

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Objective: This meta-ethnography synthesises the evidence on the experiences, needs and concerns of younger women with breast cancer.Methods: Using a method called 'reciprocal translation' we developed a conceptual model to reflect the local and social contexts, issues, processes, needs and concerns of importance in this literature.Findings: Key findings relate to the particular point in the life-course at which young women with breast cancer stand. Issues for these women relate to feeling different as a result of cancer, fear of recurrence, feeling 'out of sync' and altered embodied subjectivity. Young women with breast cancer use three processes to integrate the changes that cancer brings, namely, balancing, normalising and changing. Our conceptual model also highlights young women's needs, primarily for support, information, childcare, counselling and spiritual support. Areas of reproduction, fertility and sexuality were also of particular concern. The included papers have methodological limitations that impact on our findings, such as opportunistic data analyses, lack of theoretical frameworks and limited reference to socio-cultural factors.Conclusion: The conceptual model developed as a result of this meta-ethnography provides a basis for practitioners to address these young women's concerns more adequately and comprehensively.

show abstract

Section: Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Normalisingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The experiences, needs and concerns of younger women with breast cancer: a meta‐ethnography

et al. 2011

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It is the value of this "hope" that many women hold onto (Franklin, 1997). This article draws on a larger study that examines women's experiences of breast cancer and their postsurgical body (Crompvoets, 2003a). In-depth interviews were conducted with 30 women at different stages in their breast cancer trajectory.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For a more developed analysis of this case study seeCrompvoets, 2003b. Downloaded by [University of New Hampshire] at 06:04 02 November 2014…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Comfort, Control, or Conformity: Women Who Choose Breast Reconstruction Following Mastectomy

Crompvoets

2006

Health Care for Women International

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Following breast amputation women commonly are presented with two choices: to wear a prosthesis or undergo reconstruction. Breast restoration is assumed to allow a full emotional and physical recovery from a breast cancer crisis. Surgical reconstruction is offered to women as the final step in regaining a sense of complete womanhood, enabling a sense of optimism that both body and self will "get back to normal." This article examines 5 women's accounts of breast reconstruction and asks how breast reconstruction figures in the remaking of self following mastectomy. Issues pertaining to the reasoning behind seeking out the procedure, experiences of finding the right surgeon, and how women feel toward their reconstructed postsurgical body are examined. In conclusion it is argued that a number of contradictory expectations are held by women seeking reconstructions. While women suggest that reconstruction will restore lost femininity, sexuality, and normalcy in most cases it is not the procedure that enables this but the elimination of the hassles of prostheses. In contrast to the complete sense of self they expected to regain through reconstruction they articulate a restoration that is simply pragmatic. It is only once women have undertaken this last bastion of hope that they are forced to renegotiate their sense of themselves as women with or without breasts.

show abstract

“…These are questions more often posed in relation to prostheses used by individuals following surgical removal of body parts, with mastectomy being a particular focus of the work of Manderson (e.g. 1999;Manderson & Stirling, 2007) and Crompvoets (2003Crompvoets ( , 2012. However, such questions are also relevant to an understanding of these women's body practices.…”

Section: Cyborg Corporeality and Prosthetic Additions To The Breastfementioning

confidence: 99%

Becoming-(breastfeeding-)woman: women’s body practices and experiences at the intersection of breastfeeding, milk insufficiency, and milk sharing

Smith¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The breastfeeding body is a site of complex, contested, and conspicuously moralised practices that has long been a focus for research in the social sciences through to the arts and humanities. Often too the maternal, lactating body is situated within a biomedical frame that marks the milk-producing body as problematic, failing, and subject to and object of expert knowledges. In this frame, women who identify as producing "not enough milk" to feed their babies have been a significant focus.Despite this extensive attention, however, there is little research that has explored women's experiences of and body practices enacted in relation to continued breastfeeding alongside ongoing milk insufficiency, nor the act of milk sharing as a specific response to this bodily insufficiency.In this thesis, I describe and discuss my research with 13 women who have faced difficulties in breastfeeding based on a shared experience of 'chronic milk insufficiency'. I also focus on the act of milk sharing as one response to this insufficiency. Through analysis and discussion of in-depth interviews and observation, I explore how women enact and experience body practices at the intersection of breastfeeding, milk insufficiency, and milk sharing.My critical exploration of breastfeeding, milk insufficiency, and milk sharing as interrelated body practices and modes of meaning-making is informed by, and also informs, the use of a conceptual frame developed through articulation with corporeal and post-constructionist feminism, and ideas from Deleuze and Guattari's work such as deterritorialisation, complex assemblages, flows, desire, and (inter)corporeality. I employ this rhizomatic, cyborg conceptual frame to analyse women's body practices with reference to a number of Deleuzo-Guattarian thematic strands including expectations and beginnings, incorporation and avoidance, the fragmenting body and complex assemblages, creative corporeality and body extension, and becoming-(breastfeeding-)woman.In situating embodied knowledge relative to creative body practices, and highlighting the spaces between bodies and the tension between normative and resistive body practices, I disarticulate and reterritorialise a range of ideas about maternal, lactating bodies. Taken together, these support the conceptualisation of continued breastfeeding in the context of ongoing insufficient milk as a creative, resistant (inter)corporeal act. I further discuss this creative (inter)corporeality in terms of its pragmatic and conceptual implications for anthropologists and social scientists more broadly, as well as for health professionals and others working with pregnant and breastfeeding women.ii Declaration by authorThis thesis is composed of my original work, and contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference has been made in the text. I have clearly stated the contribution by others to jointly-authored works that I have included in my thesis.

show abstract

Reconstructing the self: breast cancer and the post-surgical body

Cited by 19 publications

References 2 publications

The experiences, needs and concerns of younger women with breast cancer: a meta‐ethnography

The experiences, needs and concerns of younger women with breast cancer: a meta‐ethnography

Comfort, Control, or Conformity: Women Who Choose Breast Reconstruction Following Mastectomy

Becoming-(breastfeeding-)woman: women’s body practices and experiences at the intersection of breastfeeding, milk insufficiency, and milk sharing

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About