Congo Cancer: Eve Ensler’s Reconstruction of the Self through Auto/pathography Cover Image

Congo Cancer: Eve Ensler’s Reconstruction of the Self through Auto/pathography
Congo Cancer: Eve Ensler’s Reconstruction of the Self through Auto/pathography

Author(s): Marta Fernandez-Morales
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: UNIVERSITATEA »ȘTEFAN CEL MARE« SUCEAVA
Keywords: cancer memoir; body; self; relationality; Eve Ensler

Summary/Abstract: American playwright and activist Eve Ensler has explained how, dueto her father‘s abuse, she felt exiled from her own body from a young age(Greene 2001; Ensler 2006). Her theatrical praxis, including the internationallyacclaimed Vagina Monologues (1998), provides a means for her to re-inhabither organism and re-examine her victimization.In 2010, while campaigning against gender violence in the Congo,Ensler was diagnosed with uterine cancer. She recorded her traumaticexperience in In the Body of the World (2013), which opens with a reminderabout her early ―exile‖ and closes with an encouragement to rise against abuse.Throughout its 53 chapters, Ensler reflects that cancer threw her ―through thewindow of my disassociation into the center of my body‘s crisis‖, reconnecting her with her physical self and with the world.Situated within feminist epistemology and with a methodology basedon close reading, this paper analyzes Ensler‘s memoir as a gendered journey ofreconstruction of the self. It argues that, through an exercise of re-memberingthat is reflected in the structure and in her explicit focus on female bodilyexperience, Ensler creates a relational narrative of uterine cancer that includesnot only her own story, but also those of other women who have undergonevictimization.