I finished my first of three seminar papers last night. The perfectionist in me wants to go back and keep editing; the realist in me knows I have to cut and run. I think it turned out okay. The paper was actually a proposal for a larger scholarly research project. The title of the proposal is: “The Pathologized Breast: Feminist Epistemology, Imaging Technology, and Class Consciousness.” I am proposing to do ethnographic research at two women’s health clinics in Minneapolis. Each of the two clinics are representative of different patient populations–specifically in relation to class position. One is a community health clinic that serves a class-underprivileged patient population; the other is an university clinic that serves a class-privileged patient population. At these clinics, I hope to conduct participant-observations of women receiving breast ultrasounds as well as conduct follow-up interviews with the patients, technicians, and doctors. I think class is an important grounding to my project in terms of how it relates to knowledge production within our material practices (everyday “real” life). As such, I want to know if the cross-class patient populations come to know their bodies in different ways through imaging technology. More definitively, when a woman receives a breast ultrasound, how does the use of this technology govern her understanding of her body as “normal,” “deviant,” or “healthy” under the rubric of conceptual medical models of definition and treatment. (I am working from the premise that science is socially constructed in many ways.) Another troubling feature of my inquiry is the literal fear of life or death surrounding the breast ultrasound produced by breast cancer mortality rates. On one level, this fear legitimates women’s trust of routine screening tests; on another, it engenders a complicity between women and medical professionals which grants these professionals jurisdiction over breast cancer, treatment of breast cancer, and breast pathology–the jurisdiction of which extends well beyond the scientific capacity to “cure” breast cancer (thank you Catherine Reissman “Women and Medicalization: A New Perspective”).

Why do I care about diagnostic breast ultrasounds? Four years ago, my sister-in-law Camille died of breast cancer. Camille was told by doctors that she was in remission in December 2001, after a half a year of chemo treatments. In April 2002 the doctors discovered that the cancer had metastasized into her liver, and she died in August, a few short months later, at the age of 36. I remember vividly the last time I saw her the July before her death; during that particular visit, she told me: “Don’t ever trust a doctor if they feel something in your breast with their hands; you have to see it to be sure. I don’t trust it unless I can see it.” This started me thinking about women’s relationships to their bodies through imaging technology. How do we come to know our bodies through imaging technology? What faith do we put in imaging technology to reassure us that we are okay? I miss Camille, and I hope in some way my project will help me understand what she went through as she sat through ultrasound after ultrasound within the rubric of medical authority wanting to know what was wrong with her body–wanting to know why her body had betrayed her.

So, my project is dedicated to Camille Pollei Matson: April 1966 to August 2002. She was a life that filled up so much space and gave so much love.