Mourning for Tomorrow - Hope and Hopelessness in Oncology Wards in Serbia
Mourning for Tomorrow - Hope and Hopelessness in Oncology Wards in Serbia

Summary/Abstract: This paper is designed to show how the space of the clinic powerfully shapes the relationships between oncology patients and their doctors as well as how it informs the relationships between patients themselves. It illustrates how historically particular ideas about citizenship and the role of the state in a postsocialist context of contemporary Serbia produce specific ways through which hoping and hopelessness are manifested. In the space of the clinic the patients’ subjectivities and state hierarchies are amplified by constant engagement with the urgency of decision making, and the immediacy of decay and suffering. Negotiation for possibilities of treatment through the interactions with doctors and medical institutions as fetishized extensions of the state creates distinct strategies deployed by oncology patients to understand one’s future and one’s place in the space of the clinic. It is the goal of this project to pursue a deeper understanding of how the haunting manifestation of fear of the possibility which future brings shapes patients’ understanding of daily living. Unraveling the narratives about illness, fears and expectations of oncology patients in Serbia will lead to grasping their ideas of what it means to be alive in the characteristic context of postsocialist oncology wards in Serbia.

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