Troublesome breasts: older women living in the liminal state of being ‘at risk’ of breast cancer

Abstract

It is almost unthinkable to consider any condition of the breast without simultaneously evoking the dread of breast cancer. The ways in which women’s experience of ‘benign breast disease’ and ‘risk’ disrupt the notion of a previously predictable and familiar relationship with the self/body form the subject of this paper. A discursive analysis of both terms is followed by a case study which illustrates and analyses the subject positions one woman takes up as she lives the everyday/every night embodiment of troublesome breasts. Troublesome breasts are experienced as enduring, and simultaneously immediate, embodied reminders of uncertainty. A diagnosis of ‘benign breast disease’ may offer a sense of relief and reassurance for women because it is not, in this moment, breast cancer. But it is a slippery and difficult position to hold because of the embodied fear that it may, at any time, become cancer. Thus closure is always partial. Women’s very engagement with ongoing surveillance ensures that the body remembers; and the ongoing bodily production of memory reaches beyond any physical symptom or particular encounter with the clinic.

Key Words:

• ‘benign breast disease’
• breast cancer
• older women
• risk
• clinic
• surveillance