ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the relationship between illness, in particular cancer and language. It explores the way cancer is used as a negative signifier, taking as a point of departure Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor, by critically acknowledging the punitive imagery, or 'despotic' cultural baggage attached to cancer. The chapter shows that positive metaphors can be used by the sick to express the sense of alienation that an illness often brings with it. Drawing on theoretical approaches to metaphor from Aristotle to Derrida, frame within the parameters of contemporary Catalan culture by analyzing a number of literary and visual works that exemplify the merciless, as well as the comforting uses of metaphor in relation to illness. Illness, as metaphor, continues being a powerful way of referring to something else, but it would be a sign of originality not to have recourse to this unimaginative formula when it carries with it a sense of stigma.
