Abstract
The article investigates how new forms of illness communication online are challenging the famous ’sick role’ described by Talcott Parsons in favour of more activist, participatory and entrepreneurial illness voices. The article more specifically makes a case study of online platforms made by the English blogger Stephen Sutton and it discusses his extremely positive and spirited way of handling a life threatening cancer disease, which resulted in the crowdfunding of almost five million GBP for the Teenage Cancer Trust. The concepts of ’biological citizenship’ from Nikolas Rose and ’affective labor’ from Michael Hardt are used to establish an analytical framework able to grasp the dilemmas related to the case and to the rising tendency of intertwining intimate pathographies with social, economical or political projects. These concepts are chosen because they allow the researcher to affirm the positive discursive, affective and economical consequences of Sutton’s work, while also reflecting on the way the maintenance of vitality, happiness and hope, as key components of contemporary biopolitics, are possibly affecting and transforming current illness practices.
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