Abject Relations: Everyday Worlds of Anorexia

Notes

191 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION . Pseudonyms have been used for participants throughout this book except in the case of one woman who requested that her name not be changed, as she felt that this was an important part of her recovery and of who she is. . Marilyn Strathern acknowledges Schneider as “the anthropological father” of After Nature, “since it is both with and against his ideas on kinship that [her book] is written” (, xviii). . The average age was twenty-eight, belying the stereotype of people with anorexia as in their early teens. . Lester () provides an illuminating account of how sexual abstinence in anorexia is clinically constructed in relation to normative constructions of sexuality and femininity. . As Jenkins and Barrett note in their edited volume on schizophrenia, a Janus-faced approach is necessary in such an effort, as one must work with the clinical category as it is currently defined (schizophrenia or anorexia) and at the same time subject it to cultural critique (, –). Moreover, this book does not subscribe to the common assumption that anorexia exists independently of bulimia or eating disorders not otherwise specified (categorized by the acronym EDNOS). The American Psychiatric Association’s Work Group on Eating Disorders reflects the intermingling of eating disorders when it describes anorexia nervosa as “a continuum between anorexia and bulimia, [with] many patients demonstrating a mixture of both anorexic and bulimic behaviors” (, ). . I found an implicit assumption among some female audience members at seminar presentations of this research that simply being a woman made one an authority and gave one authenticity for all women’s experience. Tsing, citing Strathern’s arguments in The Gender of the Gift (), warns against the easy assumptions “that women everywhere are the same; that women’s speech reveals a ‘woman’s point of view’; that women always speak from the gender identity of ‘woman.’ Strathern stresses the necessity of investigating the forms of power and discourse framed by the exclusions and oppositions of gender; these become the starting point for discussing both the ‘femaleness’ and the ‘agency’ of women’s agency” (Tsing , ). . Bray lists the many significations of anorexia, concluding that “this taxonomy demonstrates that the body of the woman who practices eating disorders presents a coding problem. As the ‘dark continent of femininity,’ the territory of the anorexic body has been colonised by a motley group of discourses contesting the truth of anorexic lack” (, –). NOTES 192 NOTES TO PAGES 8–11 . Popular and medical literature is replete with examples of “anorexics” looking in the mirror and seeing an imaginary body that belies their emaciated form. Similarly, when people with anorexia are asked to draw their physical body, they are said to exaggerate their size. The current emphasis on thinness is not in accordance with people’s own representations or renderings. . People with HIV/AIDS, though, are similarly represented in a process of death. What fascinates and horrifies for both anorexia and AIDS is the closeness of death in the prime of life. . One psychiatrist asked me if I was aware that it was very fashionable to study anorexia, pointing to the double exoticism of anorexia and psychiatry. Anorexia is fashionable in the sense that it is more spectacular than other eating disorders. The media privileges anorexia through glamorization and fetishization of this disorder, as exemplified by the Australian weeknight television program (A Current Affair) that followed a young woman’s experience of anorexia and treatment over three years. Not once during my fieldwork did I see the same program hosting a special on bulimia or compulsive eating. These disorders do not offer the horror or spectacle of the wasted anorexic body and are therefore not considered high rating. Gordon (a professor of psychology and practicing clinical psychologist), in his book Eating Disorders: Anatomy of a Social Epidemic, highlights the way in which the media has had a hand in popularizing some psychiatric disorders: “During the late s and early s, anorexia nervosa was widely publicized, glamorized, and to some extent romanticized. Language such as ‘disorder of the s’ reflects the fact that in the era of modern media, diseases, and particularly psychiatric disorders, can easily become fashionable and popularized, and this was indeed the case for anorexia nervosa ” (, ). Malson (a lecturer in psychology) similarly notes: “The high profile of ‘anorexia nervosa’ in both the popular and academic press suggests a cultural fascination with eating disorders” (, ). . A brief review of Malson’s recent book The Thin Woman (), for example, illustrates this...