Cancer Ecologies

A Queer Femme Portal

Nina Lykke, Camila Marambio

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2026
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350504622
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Art & Politics

Cancer Ecologies: A Queer Femme Portal invites readers on a journey through the tangled roots of the current cancer epidemic.

Moving between personal accounts and eco-critical reflections, the Nina Lykke and Camila Marambio ask: What if cancer is not just a personal tragedy or monstrous invader, but a symptom of Earth in distress – a message from the planet itself? Challenging the idea of cancer as an isolated enemy to be eradicated, this book sees it as a manifestation of the toxic entanglements of the Anthropocene: capitalist extraction, colonial exploitation, and environmental degradation.

Through an eco-ethics of softness, the authors – one living with cancer, the other a carer to a partner who died from it – explore how cancer might be approached as a portal: as a conversation between pain and possibility, between necropolitics and vibrantly ongoing life. Encouraging readers to understand themselves not as separate from Earth, but as lovers entangled with peatmoss, the microalgae, diatoms, and other humble creatures that sustain us, Cancer Ecologies experiments with a genre-bending methodology: part poetic story-telling and part eco-philosophical analysis. The book offers a transformative rethinking of cancer: less as a battle, more as an invitation to compost grief and cultivate ongoing cycles of life and death, rooted in relationality, shared vulnerability, and practices of joy.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Principles of Composition and Authorship
• Permissions and Reprints
• Prologue The Cancer, the Peat Moss, and the Diatom A Queer Femme Tale
• 1 Queer Companions
• Interrupter I The Blue Rabbit, Born from a Mountain
• 2 Cancer Ecologies
• Interrupter II A Liver Tumor’s Story
• 3 Cancer as Talent
• Interrupter III Brotherhood
• 4 A Compassionate Companion’s Cancer Contemplations
• Interrupter IV Dreamscapes—A Triptych
• 5 The Danger of Being (Me) Model
• Interrupter V Cave Interview
• 6 My Body Is a Bog
• Interrupter VI Summonings
• 7 Thinking about Cancer Cells, Their Evolution and Ecologies: An Interview Conversation
• Interrupter VII Notes from My Seaside Diary
• 8 Loving Diatoms—Queering Cancer
• Interrupter VIII The Weird Recording
• 9 A Queer Femme Eco-Ethics of Softness
• Epilogue
• Notes
• References
• Index