Practices of sharing and socializing autobiographical accounts of illness are a contemporary method subjects can use to relate to themselves and to the other. This movement unveils other ways of being in the world. We analyzed connecting and sharing practices – and the scope and rationality that spur them – activated by cancer patients on two occasions (first, a discussion list and, second, a guide), highlighting their implications for subjectivity and contemporary biosociality. The hypothesis is that the emergence of a connection device made certain types of illness at the same time intelligible, practicable, and governable.
Device; Subjectivity; Communication; Cancer; Biosociality