anorexia as speech – Little Bristling Soul

From “Against the false narratives of anorexia” by Katy Waldman

maud ellman

For the anorectic “hunger is a form of speech; and speech is necessarily a dialogue whose meanings do not end with the intentions of the speaker [whose body is] enmeshed in social codes that precede […] and outlast […] its consciousness” (1993: 3).

Simona Giordano, Understanding Eating Disorders

Joan Jacobs Brumberg from Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease

The sign [anorexia] trusts is a physical sign, impossible to sustain by mere act of will, and the poignance of the metaphor rests in this: that anorexia proves not the soul’s superiority to but its dependence on the flesh.

Louise Gluck, Proofs & Theories

Out of terror at its incompleteness and ravenous need, anorexia constructs a physical sign calculated to manifest disdain for need, for hunger, designed to appear entirely free of all forms of dependency, to appear complete, self-contained

Louise Gluck, from Proofs & Theories, 11

The anorexic uses starvation and the domination of bodily desires in her search for control, identity and competence, and uses the resulting thinness as the sign that her control is effective.

hilda bruch