Terminal anticipation: entanglements of affect and temporality in living with advanced cancer

Abstract

Narrative approaches within the social sciences have tended to privilege narrative coherence, with the thematic and sequential progression of one’s story from beginning through middle to end often seen as a virtue and as a hallmark of strong narrative identity. Illness narratives, however, often disrupt this temporal order insofar as they render the future—and thus the narrative’s end—uncertain. Advanced cancer calls the duration, even possibility, of one’s future into question, challenging the normative construction of temporally coherent narratives. In this paper, we draw on recent work theorising contemporary orientations towards the future under the rubric of ‘anticipation’ to analyse the illness narratives and embodied experiences of people living with advanced cancer. We show how the lived experience of precarious selfhood produced in relation to uncertain futures resists coherent narrativisation. We argue that attending to the affective presence of the future in the present and challenging the normativity of narrative coherence are important dimensions of contemporary cancer narratives.