Cancer and the Indian Academic Context: Engaging with Discipline-Specific Affective Infrastructure

Abstract

Cancer is often viewed as a spectacular event, a “state of exception,” which overshadows its impact on the mundane realities of professional life, particularly academic work. This paper moves beyond viewing cancer solely through its “terminations” (treatment end, death, and job loss) to explore its relationship with academic labour. Drawing on published narratives of women academics across India who live with, survive, or care for others with cancer, we analyse the “affective circuits” that are non-individual and flow through their bodies, objects, and relations. We examine how cancer endures as a material and cultural force, shaping normative expectations of optimism, survival, and productivity within academia. The first-person accounts published as autobiographies, autoethnographies, and autopathographies provide access to non-normative emotions and position cancer as a contested site of labour. As women academics who interface with these experiences, we investigate how living with and alongside cancer disrupts the normative expectations and everyday routines of teaching, thinking, and writing. This paper critically explores the intersection between cancer and the disciplinary subjectivities of women academics in India, arguing that the experience of cancer is not just a personal health challenge but a profound, structural force that shapes and is shaped by their academic labour.