ABSTRACT
This chapter continues to develop a practical theory of hunger based on a closer examination of recent philosophical and psychoanalytical investigations of disgust. The oscillation between negative and positive emotions effected by aesthetic representations of hunger can operate in many different ways. It can create discomfort while eroticising the vital functions of the living, injured, or decaying body. The oscillation can unleash the powers of exaggeration and the grotesque to make revolting sights shed their capacity to shock or disgust. It can also convey a sense of sadness or meaninglessness that veers towards a more moral or philosophical appreciation of the sickening or terrifying in human existence. Surfeit and nausea can work in the opposite direction, converting the appetising and the desirable into the repulsive and the unbearable. The chapter pauses with Alfred Hitchcock's atrocity footage of the death camps and proceeds to consider the increasing popularity of the abject and the stercorous in contemporary art.
