Hermeneutical Rebellion as Lordean Self-Care: Resisting Identity Harm Through and Against Breast Cancer Survivor Narratives

Abstract In this paper I theorize a form of epistemic resistance rooted in Audre Lorde’s notion of self-care. I do this by developing an undertheorized concept in Miranda Fricker’s work, hermeneutical rebellion, proposing a model of epistemic self-care that can cultivate the capacities needed to resist oppressive narratives and social imaginaries acting on one’s identity. Considering breast cancer survivor narratives as a case study, I analyze the identity power wielded by the dominant narrative (e.g. white, cis, heteronormative conceptions of femininity), arguing that survivors are subject to hermeneutical injustice that kettles them into an understanding of themselves which perpetuates systems of oppression. Engaging Katharine Jenkins’s account of gender identity, I show how an individual’s efforts to rebel against this dominant narrative will be insufficient to overcome identity harms, as she will be defining herself in relation to the same constructions she is rebelling against. I argue that a different type of rebellion is needed—one capable of loosening the grip of identity power on one’s sense of self. Drawing from Lorde’s experience as well as my own, ultimately I reframe the dominant narrative as absurd and introduce Donna Haraway’s cyborg myth as a model for the kind of alternative conceptual resource that can make this rebellion possible.