ABSTRACT
In clinical terms, the self-starvation of anorexia nervosa is regarded as lacking in self-care and propelled by a loss of agency to the illness. However, engaging with individuals with anorexia elucidates not only how such care may be experienced as care-less, but also that embodied practices of not eating engender alternative modes of attention; anorexia, although recognized by participants as an illness, offers ways of caring both for oneself and for Others. Treatment can be enforced in England through sectioning under the mental health act 'where substantial risk cannot be managed in any other way'. On the eating disorders inpatient unit (EDU) on which conducted ethnographic fieldwork, meals are only one part of an extensive programme of psychological support. Foregrounding the feeding of the body as the central element of care serves to locate anorexia in the body.
