현대 여성의 새로운 히스테리, 거식증: 여성의 몸과 욕망

Abstract

This paper aims to explore how the emaciated body of the anorectic presents itself as a caricature of the contemporary ideal of hyper-slenderness for women, an ideal that has become the cultural norm for women today. First, this paper points out how anorexia can be described as the twentieth-century version of hysteria. This paper focuses on the characteristics of anorexia from psychoanalytic perspectives. Further, this paper examines how anorexia may provide a paradigm of one way in which potential resistance is not merely undercut but utilized in the maintenance and reproduction of existing power relations. Susie Orbach interprets anorexia as a species of unconscious feminist protest in a most articulate and forceful way. The anorectic is engaged in a “hunger strike,” as Orbach calls it, stressing that this is a political discourse. Susan Bordo similarly argues that the anorectic is unaware that she is making a political statement. Through embodied rather than deliberate demonstration, she exposes and indicts those ideals, precisely by pursuing them to the point at which their destructive potential is revealed for all to see. Finally, while many feminist theorists read anorexia as protest or resistance against patriarchal power, this paper analyzes the problems of such feminist theoretical arguments, defending Sandra Lee Bartky's notion of anorexia. Bartky analyzes how the anorectic becomes, just as surely as the inmate of the Foucauldian Panopticon, a self-policing subject, committed to a relentless self-surveillance. This self- surveillance is a form of obedience to patriarchy, conforming to the cultural messages that we inscribe upon our own bodies.