Choroba nowotworowa w dobie ponowoczesności
Neoplastic disease in the postmodern age

Author(s): Maria Karpińska
Subject(s): Studies of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Summary/Abstract: The essay analyses a neoplastic disease, diagnosed as one of the greatest threats for contemporary world, and its representation in postmodern culture. Malicious tumor, considered a death sentence, deceitful and unexpected yet common menace is also defined as a civilization disease, identified with affluence of the western civilization seen as an artificial world existing far from Nature (according to this theory all products of ultra‑modern technology are considered carcinogenic). The post modern image of neoplastic disease (cancer) is then confronted with contemporary cult of health what in consequence leads to discussion on responsibility for illness which (as described by Ronald W. Dworkin and Susan Sontag in their works on the subject) in the modern world is usually attributed to the sick person themselves. This explains the attempts to connect disease with its victim’s personality leading to concept of “cancer personality” and to disappearance of a language people could use to talk about illness as a result making it a social taboo (“tabooisation of disease”). The second chapter of the work is devoted to the analysis of different attitudes toward the creation of narration in confrontation with terminal (neoplastic) illness represented by Susan Sontag and Anatole Broyard in their texts on the subject. Finally the last chapter deals with the neoplastic disease as a factor transforming the nomadic perception of time in postmodern society in which the illness provides a person with an opportunity to feel “settled in time” again.In general the work presents the complex image of a neoplastic disease (cancer) in postmodern culture as well as the new “narrative environment” experienced by the sick and the healthy alike.

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