Encountering the Cancer Ghosts in ‘Exploding into Life’

Abstract

Due to its unique aetiology and pathology, cancer cannot simply be understood in the typical diagnosis-treatment-prognosis trajectory. To a post-surgical patient, living with cancer usually implies living with the fear of its recurrence. Cancer, in other words, is a constant invisible presence that haunts. In this article, I focus on cancer's haunting and propose that we turn away from the narrative timeline to a narrative space, in which a ‘ghostly encounter’ with the unspeakable aspect of the cancer experience is possible. I then use Dorothea Lynch's and Eugene Richards' Exploding into Life (1986), a photo-journal of Lynch's breast cancer experience as an example. I use the text to illustrate how it is within this ‘ghostly space’ that we can direct our attention to the not there that is present in the cancer story. As such, it embodies not only Lynch's story of cancer, but also what is repressed (in the others), and how the repressed can return in different (ghostly) forms. And finally, I show how it is through these encounters with the cancer ghosts that a collective story of cancer can be shared and witnessed.