Starving in the Silences - An Exploration of Anorexia Nervosa (Paperback)

Impressive in its scope . . . . The author clearly has a good grounding in fields as diverse as feminist theory, contemporary French philosophy, and medico-psychological discourses. Added to this are the findings of an empirical study and her own therapeutic practices. This adds up to a formidable range of knowledge(s) which the author is able to bring to bear on the phenomenon of anorexia.
-- Moira Gatens, author of Feminism and Philosophy

In Western culture the human body is observed, gazed upon, and measured. The female body is exhorted to conform to models in the way the soul once was: some bodies are divine, objects of worship, thoroughly good and pure, and these are the bodies for which we must strive.
While the medical profession views anorexia as a type of psychiatric illness, feminists consider it a symbol of women's oppression - a choice women can make to express themselves within a gender order where women's power is unequal to men's. Starving in the Silences explores the feminist and medical responses to anorexia. How does the label anorexia nervosa make the experience of self-starving explicable or meaningful to the starver? What does anorexia tell us about the experience and meaning of femininity in our culture and our subconscious?
Drawing on the work of Foucault, Irigaray, Lacan and her own experiences in working with women diagnosed as anorexic, Matra Robertson's unique achievement is to shed the layers-- much in the way a self-starver sheds layers in search of herself--of a discourse which has created anorexia nervosa and which its sufferers now inhabit.