Abject Relations: Everyday Worlds of AnorexiaAbject Relations presents an alternative approach to anorexia, long considered the epitome of a Western obsession with individualism, beauty, self-control, and autonomy. Through detailed ethnographic investigations, Megan Warin looks at the heart of what it means to live with anorexia on a daily basis. Participants describe difficulties with social relatedness, not being at home in their body, and feeling disgusting and worthless. For them, anorexia becomes a seductive and empowering practice that cleanses bodies of shame and guilt, becomes a friend and support, and allows them to forge new social relations. Unraveling anorexia's complex relationships and contradictions, Warin provides a new theoretical perspective rooted in a socio-cultural context of bodies and gender. Abject Relations departs from conventional psychotherapy approaches and offers a different "logic," one that involves the shifting forces of power, disgust, and desire and provides new ways of thinking that may have implications for future treatment regimes. |
Contents
Acknowledgments | |
1 Introduction | |
2 Steering a Course between Fields | |
3 Knowing through the Body | |
4 The Complexities of Being Anorexic | |
5 Abject Relations with Food | |
6 Me and My Disgusting Body | |
7 Becoming Clean | |
8 Reimagining Anorexia | |
Notes | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
abjection Amanda ambiguous American Psychiatric Association anore anorexia nervosa anorexic anthropology argues asceticism asked associated bedroom belonging blood bodily body Bourdieu bulimia calories central chapter clean cleanliness clinical commensality concept concerned connection contamination cultural dangerous described desire dirt dirty discourse disgust eating disorders eating-disorder embodied emotions Estelle ethnographic everyday example experiences of anorexia explore fear feel felt field fieldwork fluids friends gender highlighted hospital hygiene identity images inpatient kitchen Kristeva Lane Cove language lives Malson menstruation metaphor move narrative therapy Natalia notes nurses nutritional obsessive-compulsive disorder participants patients people's phenomenology polluting practices pregnant primitivism pro-ana Probyn psychiatric psychiatrist purging relatedness relations relationships riences Rita secrecy sense sexual shared Silverchair similarly smell social spaces staff suggests symbolic things tion transformed treatment understanding vomiting ward rounds Washing weight women writes