Malignant

How Cancer Becomes Us

By: S. Lochlann Jain

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Paperback | 15 October 2013 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
302 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24 x 1.73

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Cancer can kill: this fact makes it concrete. Still, it's a devious knave. Nearly every American will experience it up-close and all too personally, wondering why the billions of research dollars thrown at the word haven't exterminated it from the English language. Like a sapper diffusing a bomb, Jain unscrambles the emotional, bureaucratic, medical, and scientific tropes that create the thing we call cancer. Scientists debate even the most basic facts about the disease, while endlessly generated, disputed, population data produce the appearance of knowledge. Jain takes the vacuum at the center of cancer seriously and demonstrates the need to understand cancer as a set of relationships - economic, sentimental, medical, personal, ethical, institutional, statistical. Malignant into pain and decay. Malignant examines the painful cognitive dissonances produced by the ways a culture that has relished dazzling success in every conceivable arena have twisted one of its staunchest failures into an economic triumph. The intractable foil to American achievement, cancer hands us - on a silver platter and ready for Jain's incisively original dissection - our sacrifice to the American Dream.

About the Author

S. Lochlann Jain is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University and author of Injury: Design and Litigation in the United States.

Industry Reviews

"Brilliant." -- Barbara Kiser Nature "A whip-smart read." -- Becky Lang Discover "A dark journey into cancer as it is understood, diagnosed and treated in America today." Kirkus "The book effortlessly combines the author's roles as a first-person participant in cancer diagnosis and an anthropological authority on why we Americans tolerate high rates of cancer." http://www.publicbooks.org/nonfiction/cancers-poison-gift Public Books "Malignant is a wonderful book... In this candid and critical analysis, [Jain]... eloquently captures the ambiguity and uncertainty that undergird every aspect of cancer." Journal of Anthropological Research

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