Why do women with breast cancer should be beautiful and men with prostate cancer can go without shaving? oncology, dissent, and hegemonic culture

Abstract

The oncology universe apparently is an area of deep consensus; alleviate the suffering of patients and families, the search for an effective cure or eradicate the stigma associated with the diagnosis are objectives that generate broad societal agreement. From a cultural perspective, however, we note the presence of certain areas of tension and dissent around the cancer. In this paper, applying analytical concepts of Gramsci and Foucault, as defined Decalogue common places like positive thinking, femininity, preventing or fighting spirit form a hegemonic culture in facing breast cancer cultures speeches subaltern as feminist or environmentalist. Faced with the idea of unity and consensus, the analysis of the anthropological literature provides a complex picture where the cancer experience resignifying disease as a space of ideological conflict, is constructed in terms of conflict of interests and projects of social control.