The lungs serve as a site of interchange between the bodily and environmental, an interface between the internal and external world, enacted through breath. We draw on the primacy of this exchange to explore the complexities of living with lung cancer amidst the enduring social challenge of stigma and the advent of ‘targeted therapies’ at the cutting edge of precision medicine. Lung cancer’s association with smoking and resulting stigmatisation of those with lung cancer has been well documented – positioning those with lung cancer as failed subjects of a biopolitics of lifestyle. However, recent developments in ‘precision medicine’ have drawn attention to alternate, genetic causes of lung cancer, disrupting easy equivalences between deviant cells (malignancy) and deviant conduct (smoking). Despite this, and drawing on interviews with 32 people receiving targeted therapy for lung cancer in Australia, we identify enduring resonances of deviance and stigma which still foreground individual lifestyle and blame, even for those – like many participants in this study – who have never smoked. Even in the context of uncertain causal origins and genetic mutations, the stigma of lung cancer and the figure of ‘the smoker’ as an object of abjection and disavowal persists. We find Alaimo’s concept of transcorporeality instructive for moving away from this biopolitics of lifestyle, toward greater recognition of the collective, though unequal, conditions of ‘carcinogenic capitalism’ in which we all must live and breathe. In turn, our analysis of the specificities of lung cancer may inform broader sociological approaches to tackle stigma at a structural level.

中文翻译：

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基因组转变后的肺癌：从“生活方式”的生物政治到呼吸的跨身体性


肺部是身体与环境之间的交流场所，是内部世界与外部世界之间的界面，通过呼吸实现。我们利用这次交流的首要地位，探讨在耻辱的持久社会挑战和精准医学前沿“靶向治疗”的出现中肺癌患者生活的复杂性。肺癌与吸烟的关联以及由此导致的对肺癌患者的污名化已被充分记录——将肺癌患者定位为生活方式生命政治的失败对象。然而，“精准医学”的最新发展引起了人们对肺癌的替代遗传原因的关注，打破了异常细胞（恶性肿瘤）和异常行为（吸烟）之间的简单等同。尽管如此，并根据对澳大利亚 32 名接受肺癌靶向治疗的患者的采访，我们发现了偏差和耻辱的持久共鸣，这些共鸣仍然突出个人生活方式和指责，即使对于那些从未吸烟过的人（就像本研究中的许多参与者一样） 。即使在因果起源不确定和基因突变的背景下，肺癌的耻辱和“吸烟者”作为贬低和否认对象的形象仍然存在。我们发现阿莱莫的跨肉体概念对于摆脱这种生活方式的生物政治学具有启发性，可以更好地认识我们所有人都必须生活和呼吸的“致癌资本主义”的集体条件，尽管不平等。反过来，我们对肺癌特殊性的分析可能会为更广泛的社会学方法提供信息，以在结构层面上解决耻辱问题。