Precarious living in the age of precision medicine: The impasse of chronic malignancy

Owing in large part to the rise of precision medicine, cancers that were once considered ‘terminal’ now often entail long-term treatability alongside ongoing incurability. The resulting chronic malignancy is fundamentally reconfiguring the meaning and experience of living with cancer and – we argue – illustrates some of the key features of precarious living, more generally. Drawing on 132 in-depth interviews and building from Lauren Berlant’s idea of the ‘impasse’, this article explores the affective and temporal dimensions of precarious living through the case of chronic malignancy. The advent of precision medicine appears to open up new opportunities for stalling and suspending the progression of disease, but in doing so suspends and variously stalls people’s experiences of living, too. The precariousness of living with incurable cancer in the age of precision medicine thus requires navigating unfolding temporal and affective landscapes, where traditional narrative structures dissolve into the impasse of ongoing chronicity.