Open AccessBecoming a cancer survivor: An experiment in dialogical health research
Author(s) -
Arthur W. Frank,
Kari Nyheim Solbrække
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1461-7196
pISSN - 1363-4593
DOI - 10.1177/13634593211005178
Subject(s) - dialogical self , survivorship curve , performative utterance , argument (complex analysis) , autoethnography , sociology , subject (documents) , psychology , cancer survivorship , epistemology , social psychology , gender studies , medicine , philosophy , computer science , population , demography , library science
The article makes cancer survivorship the topic of an experiment in a form of writing we call dialogical response. First, in the style of autoethnography, each author presents an account of her or his long-term survivorship of cancer and the issues that involves. Less conventionally, we then respond each to the other’s story. The article seeks to contribute to an in-depth understanding of long-term cancer survivorship. More important, we offer it as an example of a form of writing rarely practiced in health research: speaking to those who participate in research, rather than speaking about those people. Among the multiple theoretical implications that could be explored, we consider Foucault’s concept of subjectification. Our argument is that recognising the discursive formulation of the subject can and should be complemented by recognition of the local, immediate dialogical formulation of subjects. Rather than presenting research findings about cancer survivors, we offer a performative enactment of survivorship as an ongoing process of dialogical exchange. We show ourselves, responding to each other, in the process of becoming the cancer survivors we are as a result of those responses.