Eched, Yaël
How sexuality shapes health spaces: Norms, practices, and forms of resistance
- 2025.
19
In view of the current broadening of the field of fatigue and the increasing tendency to pathologize it, this article explores cancer-related fatigue (CRF) from a sociological perspective. A central phenomenon of the cancer experience, fatigue is the undesirable effect most frequently reported by patients. This unusual feeling of exhaustion, which is underestimated in treatment, partly escapes rational understanding. Fatigue, which is difficult to express and often lacks visible signs, is incomprehensible to those in good health, including carers. Building on the work of Marie Ménoret, this article offers a contribution to understanding what it means to feel fatigued during the different stages of cancer. The accounts of 25 women treated for breast cancer in a provincial town serve as reference points to analyze this phenomenon, which straddles the boundaries between the normal and the pathological, the body and the mind, the individual and the collective. The identification of three ideal types of feelings of fatigue reflects the emotional and social determinations specific to each period of life with the disease, from diagnosis to remission, and contributes to recognizing the uniqueness of these vulnerable situations.