{"title":"Breaking Taboos: Arab Breast Cancer Activism in Art and Popular Culture","authors":"Abir Hamdar","doi":"10.1007/s10912-024-09886-6","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>This essay examines the breast cancer accounts of four Arab female celebrities who have spoken out in public about their illness experience: the Egyptian TV presenter Basma Wahba and the actress Yasmine Ghaith, the Iraqi actress Namaa al-Ward, and the Lebanese pop singer Elissa. By reading their testimonies against the backdrop of critical literature on illness narratives and memoirs, as well as on cancer narratives and activism, the essay asks: how are the accounts of these women’s cancer diagnosis and treatment disclosed and described? In what medium do they communicate and circulate their breast cancer experiences? What significance do these public disclosures have on challenging and breaking the Arab taboo of cancer? In conclusion, the essay argues that these women’s willingness to share their stories in public constitutes an important form of multimedia activist intervention—visual, sonic, and performative—that is playing a key role in the development of a breast cancer movement.</p>","PeriodicalId":45518,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Medical Humanities","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Medical Humanities","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-024-09886-6","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This essay examines the breast cancer accounts of four Arab female celebrities who have spoken out in public about their illness experience: the Egyptian TV presenter Basma Wahba and the actress Yasmine Ghaith, the Iraqi actress Namaa al-Ward, and the Lebanese pop singer Elissa. By reading their testimonies against the backdrop of critical literature on illness narratives and memoirs, as well as on cancer narratives and activism, the essay asks: how are the accounts of these women’s cancer diagnosis and treatment disclosed and described? In what medium do they communicate and circulate their breast cancer experiences? What significance do these public disclosures have on challenging and breaking the Arab taboo of cancer? In conclusion, the essay argues that these women’s willingness to share their stories in public constitutes an important form of multimedia activist intervention—visual, sonic, and performative—that is playing a key role in the development of a breast cancer movement.
期刊介绍：
Journal of Medical Humanities publishes original papers that reflect its enlarged focus on interdisciplinary inquiry in medicine and medical education. Such inquiry can emerge in the following ways: (1) from the medical humanities, which includes literature, history, philosophy, and bioethics as well as those areas of the social and behavioral sciences that have strong humanistic traditions; (2) from cultural studies, a multidisciplinary activity involving the humanities; women''s, African-American, and other critical studies; media studies and popular culture; and sociology and anthropology, which can be used to examine medical institutions, practice and education with a special focus on relations of power; and (3) from pedagogical perspectives that elucidate what and how knowledge is made and valued in medicine, how that knowledge is expressed and transmitted, and the ideological basis of medical education.
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