Self-Care: Seeking Queer Liberation from the Medical Gaze and Genetic Fatalism

Abstract

Genetic diagnostics are radically and rapidly changing perceptions of health. Individuals with identifiable pathogenic genetic differences are now being made into cultural mutants. Unlike other forms of embodied difference, these diagnostics rely on a high statistical probability of developing a disease, known as genetic risk. As such, individuals with a mutation are often subjected to perform the same clinical labor as those who are already sick with a disease, which can involve invasive medical surveillance, preventative surgeries, and family planning. Self-Care is my artistic attempt to reckon with these biotechnological ruptures in identity caused by the rising use of genetic diagnostics in medicine. Using my body, Self-Care weaves a narrative about health, gender, and identity that seeks to resist the confines of the medical gaze. The work features a specially designed chest binder housing living BRCA1 mutant breast cancer cells, which allows the artist to take on the caring responsibilities of their cancer before it emerges in their body. Building off the artwork, this paper explores contemporary issues surrounding Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer Syndrome in global healthcare systems. Traversing the boundaries between sick and healthy, male and female, and parent and child, this paper sets out to both present the scholarly research surrounding Self-Care and provide a platform of critical self-reflection for the artwork to question how best we can care for ourselves and others.