Metaphors are never inherently harmful, stigmatising or prescriptive; nor are they per se healing, inviting or generative. Such verdicts reveal the binaries through which metaphors are often conceptualised. Metaphor in Illness Writing: Fight and Battle Reused reaches past these binaries to explore the varied usability of common, conventionalised metaphors, arguing that, even when a metaphor appears problematic and limiting, it can in fact be reused and reimagined in unexpected and creative ways.

The terms ‘reuse’ and ‘reusable’ quickly evoke the environmental discourse of sustainability and with it concepts like recycling, upcycling and downcycling, second-hand economies and repair. These concepts are more timely than ever in our world; they also speak to what is at the heart of this book, namely the assumption that metaphors – though seemingly abundant – are precious resources that we can and need to work with rather than throw away. Practices of reuse are especially relevant when a metaphor has become internalised, when it seems worn-out, or when it starts to be considered a risk. Rather than considering such metaphors useless or expendable, this book proposes other options: we can extend a metaphor’s longevity, we can repair it, or we can repurpose it (if need be) and thereby – in the spirit of upcycling – discover new value.

Both the varied usability of metaphor and the value of reuse is demonstrated by contemporary North American writers including Susan Sontag, Audre Lorde, Anatole Broyard, David Foster Wallace and Arthur Frank – whose work I discuss alongside that of Siri Hustvedt, Joan Didion, Eve Ensler and Sarah Manguso. In their writing on illness, all work with the multiple entailments of an extremely common metaphor: illness is a fight or battle. All of these writers echo the criticism that this metaphor has provoked: it justifies brutality and extreme measures in the treatment of illness; its martial associations can be intimidating; it considers the body (and its illness) an enemy, thus supporting a problematic body–mind duality; and it suggests only one desirable outcome (victory) and associates losing the fight or capitulating with failure and humiliation.

And yet, despite all its problematic implications, these patient-writers continue to use the metaphor. In remaining attached to notions of battle, fight and warfare, these accomplished writers are not alone. The militaristic metaphor is one of the most frequently used metaphors for cancer and other illnesses (Semino et al., ‘Online Use’; Hommerberg et al.).