Unsettling `body image

Anorexic body narratives and the materialization of the `body imaginary

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4367402
AutoresJosephine Brain (London School of Economics and Political Science, autor de correspondencia)
Año2002
Volumen3
Número2
Páginas151-168
Fecha de publicación2002-08-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaFeminist Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1464700102003002342
OpenAlexW1992502492
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas20

This article critiques contemporary feminist theory's frequent ocularcentric readings of the anorexic body as a surface of cultural inscription or as a paradigmatic sign of the female body's alienation through sexual difference. In an initial speculative attempt to find a theoretical framework that might sustain a more generative and embodied account of anorexia, I read anorexia through Butler's theory of gender as psychic `incorporation' because she problematizes an interior/exterior topography of the subject. This Butlerian framework proves problematic because, by establishing an association between visibly queer gender and subversion, it effectively designates as hegemonic any sense of gender as a felt interiority. In a second framework, I draw on Prosser's anti-ocularcentric reading of transsexual `body narratives' derived from Anzieu's theory of the `skin ego'. Filtering Butler's theory of melancholia through this skin ego framework, I find a theoretical space for anorexia as a transitional embodied subjectivity which both re-lives and relieves the melancholic trauma of gender

Aesthetics · Alienation · Art · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Literature · Narrative · Politics · Psychic · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Subjectivity · Subversion · Transgender · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Philosophy · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology