So Much Wasted: Hunger, Performance, and the Morbidity of Resistance

brittany — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Traversing critical theory, body studies, psychoanalysis, philosophy, political theory, cultural studies, and performance studies, Patrick Anderson’s So Much Wasted captures the “politics of morbidity” embedded in the act of self-starvation. Anderson focuses on three settings—the hospital/clinic, a gallery, and a prison—to consider the way people who refuse food remain subject both to institutional means of force and control along with ideological constraints and mechanisms of discipline. What can these emaciated figures, hurling themselves toward death (or, as Heidegger calls it, “being-toward-death”), teach us about subjectivity, political resistance, and the production of power through everyday disciplinary practices?

Anderson’s central claim—that self-starvation both refuses and reproduces the power of the state, and as such produces bodies and subjects capable of radically unsettling the status quo—weaves itself through many seemingly disparate moments: the political resistance of Turkish prison hunger strikes, the state’s imposition that Terri Schiavo must live despite her husband’s wishes, the life-threatening starvation performance art of Chris Burden (who, after staging his own shooting, street death, and near electrocution, asked others to watch as he wasted away for twenty-two days in a Venice Beach, CA art gallery), and Adrian Piper, Ana Mendieta, and Marina Abromovic’s staging of self-starvation as provocative, artistic disappearance. Perhaps most compelling is Anderson’s reimagining of leading feminist theorizing about anorexia as the internalization of misogyny (e.g., Susan Bordo, Susie Orbach); instead, he argues that anorexics may cultivate a “taste for power” that subverts dominant ideas about women, gender, and queerness as they dramatically rebel against state intervention.

Playful and sharp, astute and extraordinarily sympathetic, Anderson captures the inherent tragedy, power, and radical potential in this seemingly “powerless” act of self-starvation. Not only does he write with breathtaking clarity, at times frolicking between mother-child psychoanalytic theories of feeding and sexuality only to later arrive in the world of masochistic performance art, but he also genuinely extends the leading critical theories of the body, performance, power, and subjectivity (e.g., Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud, Louis Althusser, and the like). Anderson insists that self-starvation is not simply perversion, but rather, a mechanism that produces troubled reactions from other bodies (individual or the state). Thus, he subtly asks whether psychological treatments, historiographies of starving bodies, force feeding, extensive monitoring, and even photographs might serve an even more perverse purpose: investing the state with the authority to say “who must live and who may die.”

Suitable for numerous audiences—graduate courses in psychology, sociology, gender studies, and performance; scholarly audiences interested in bioethics, fatness studies, prisons, and the philosophy of selfhood; and those practitioners who work with self-starving or self-mutilating clients—this book carefully outlines a politics of resistance through dying, near-death, and “wasting away.” Even if it sometimes floats above its subjects a bit—for example, I kept wanting more content directly from those who have survived their self-starvation attempts—Anderson has written a book worthy of attention and study. By imagining rebellion as a refusal to consume, he forges new and powerful links between gender, sexuality, the body, and the ideological apparatus of the state as it faces the many rebellions of its subjects.

Written by: Breanne Fahs, February 10th 2011

Thinandbeautiful.com

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 01:00:00 +0000

By Liane Shaw

Second Story Press

As someone who has struggled with disordered eating, I was very eager to dig into Thinandbeautiful.com. This young adult book was written by Liane Shaw, a teacher who once struggled with anorexia. The story follows Maddie, an anorexic teenage girl who finds herself sucked into the "pro-ana" (pro-anorexia) website thinandbeautiful.com. Thinking no one understands how she feels about her weight and her body, Maddie pushes her friends and family away, finding her only comfort in the virtual arms of her online friends.

The story finds Maddie in a sort of rehab facility for eating disorders where she is told to keep a journal chronicling her descent into anorexia. The action shifts back and forth between the journal entries describing how Maddie fell into anorexic thinking (it all began when a doctor during a routine examination warns her to be careful about gaining "unwanted pounds") to the present day, her time in the rehab facility and her feelings that no one understands her "need" to be thinner. It's only when Maddie gets tragic news about one of her online friends that she begins to come to terms with the idea that she might have a problem.

Thinandbeautiful.com starts slowly. The journal format is difficult to get into, partially because it didn't really feel like the words of a seventeen-year-old girl. It read like the words of an adult trying to write as if she were a seventeen-year-old girl. In fact, it is reminiscent of the after school specials you might have watched in the late eighties.

Describing the descent into anorexia is difficult; the early parts of the book are slow and convoluted and don't really help to explain why someone would decide that their weight it isn't good enough, no matter how thin they may be. In fact, as much as the early pages of this book talk about Maddie's desire to be "thin and healthy," there is little mention of what her actual weight currently is or what she thinks it should be. Her goal is simply to be thinner, but there is little behind that desire. Her desire to be thin is fueled only by a vague notion that "thinner is better," not any idea about how her life will be different when she reaches her undefined magic goal weight.

I’m not saying there has to be a rational reason behind an irrational way of thinking, but I do think eating disorders are usually fueled by more than just a desire to be thin. It’s a perception that something else is lacking or that the thinness will help the sufferer achieve something, such as control. That’s why I found Maddie’s struggle difficult to identify with and understand.

About halfway through the book, once the journal entries reach their apex and Maddie really starts to confront her feelings about her family and her online friends, the story starts to resonate. You may not understand why Maddie has an eating disorder, but you do understand she’s hurting and that she’s struggling to find a way to conquer her illness. It is in the last third of the book that you feel the author's connection to the material; the words finally start to ring true and the book becomes genuine, just when it matters most.

However, Thinandbeautiful.com is a case of too little, too late. Those final glimpses aren't enough to recommend the book. Someone struggling with the same thoughts as Maddie may find Thinandbeautiful.com comforting, but those trying to understand why someone would starve themselves will find this novel lacking.

Written by: Jennifer Lee Johnson, January 19th 2010