scar project for pca 2015
TRANSCRIPT
The S.C.A.R. Project—Surviving Cancer:
But Absolute? And Whose Reality?
Portraits: Emily
Constructing an alternative rhetoric
• “Breast cancer is not a pink ribbon.” • Visual rhetoric of shock vs central construct of
family and friends of Komen•
Visual Rhetoric of the Photographs
• Activate demanding reciprocity of direct interaction with viewer
• Female embodiment which resists containment within conventional and exclusionary physical standards of female display.
• Acts of “somatic cultural resistance” and “defiance” in face of disfiguring disease
Scar vs pink ribbon
• Incorporation of terms into narratives of women
• Reflects extent to which dominant ideology of project is reflected in way they have come to see themselves and their disease
Challenge to representational practices
• Normative eroticized breast with scarred chest• Jay’s focus is on what is not there• Women out of conformity with traditional
standards yet not defeminized or desexualized• Jay’s manipulation of cultural conventions
surrounding female display
New Meaning to post mastectomy bodies
• Teach women what to expect• Enlarge cultural imaginary• Provide alternative that equates breasts with
central construct in definition of womanhood• Expands and enlarges cultural conversations
around issues of femininity, beauty, and female embodiment
Alternative to Komen
• Reifies what is generally hidden• Re vises understanding of post mastectomy
bodies• Wake up call to young women• Constructs form of emboidiment that assigns
new meaning to scars• Stigma becomes source of empowerment and
beauty