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Like hysteria, anorexia is a fin de siècle pathology which fascinates and has reached epidemic proportions at the turn of the millennium. Parallel to the development of the phenomenon, an important body of experiential texts has revealed its presence in various parts of the world. While the medical discourse is still struggling with this conundrum, literature gives way to different interpretations by revealing the interconnectedness between writing and starving. Both signifying practices are experiences of the limit where fluxes of particles - food, words - are in constant interaction. Unlike most contemporary readings of anorexia, this book offers an original insight into the creative process inherent to the pathology, which the author calls Writing Size Zero. Body of writing and writing of the body, as found in western and post-colonial texts, delineate an in-between space producing new epistemologies. Through a close reading of the semiotics of self-starvation, the author debunks the myth of anorexia as a mental disease of the West and insists on the variety of expressions and figurations inherent to the pathology. By providing a meaning to self-starvation, writing gives anorexia its ethics.
List of contents
Contents: Figurations vs. representations of anorexia - Anorexia in contemporary world literatures - Starving and writing - Anorexia in western and post-colonial texts - Creative process and pathologisation - The birth of the author and the ethics of anorexia - Subjective experience of anorexia in experiential texts.
About the author
The Author: Isabelle Meuret, Ph.D. (Université Catholique de Louvain). She teaches English at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and does research in literatures in English and cultural studies.
Report
«Due to its explorations of non-Anglo-European representations of eating disorders such as the often cited 'Nervous Conditions' by Tsitsi Dangarembga (1989) as well as many other less known texts, 'Writing Size Zero' provides an important contribution to comparative studies of eating disorders. [...] For taking critical interest outside of late industrial societies and beyond English language texts, Meuret is to be praised, and the parts of her study dealing with what she calls 'transcultural anorexia' are the most exciting and original ones.» (Greta Olson, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen)
