Paper short abstract:

Enlarging the way social science can understand and act in matters of health and illness, this paper results from an art-based anthropological analysis regarding the experience of a Portuguese woman through the diagnosis and treatment of an endometrial adenocarcinoma.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation results from an anthropological analysis regarding the experience of a Portuguese woman through the diagnosis and treatment of an endometrial adenocarcinoma. Her embodied knowledge and narrative will allow us to grasp a specific set of health issues endured by women with gynaecological malignancies, understanding how perceptions of illness, treatment, corporeity, sexuality, womanhood, motherhood and resistance are intertwined. Methodologically, this analysis blends oral narrative, anthropology and creative scientific illustration, that is, ethnographic drawing and painting enhanced by the use of metaphor and imagination. This hybrid and collaborative exercise implied a levelled mixture of speech, text and image, grounded on the words of the interviewed woman. Conceptually, it understands creative visual practices as ontological, epistemological and performative resources, enlarging the way social science can understand and act in matters of health and illness. This illustrated analysis also intends to dismantle stereotypes entrenched in the ways we see and understand women, gynaecological malignancies and sexual organs, bringing into discussion a type of cancer that, although frequent, is absent from public discussion and collective imagery, being similarly disregarded by social science.

Keywords: endometrial cancer; brachytherapy; motherhood; anthropology; art