ABSTRACT
As we have seen, a variety of different discourses converge upon the thin/ anorexic body, constituting that body in numerous often conflicting ways so that it signifies a multiplicity of diverse subjectivities. The discursive productions of ‘anorexia’ are inextricably tied up with the discursive productions of identity and the problematics of feminine subjectivity (see Chapter 7). From this perspective ‘anorexia’ can be read as a form of self-production. The material and discursive production of the female body as an ‘anorexic’ body simultaneously produces a range of particular subjectivities for the thin or ‘anorexic’ woman. And, indeed, ‘anorexia’ may be explicitly construed as a means of producing identity (see Chapter 7): self-starvation may be explicitly constituted as a form of selfproduction. Yet such ‘anorexic’ practices are also quite clearly associated with profound psychological distress and are in themselves damaging and selfdestructive. ‘Anorexia’ can thus be understood as a material and discursive process of producing an identity for oneself and simultaneously of destroying oneself both literally and metaphorically. And it is this tension, this paradoxical construction of ‘anorexia’ as both self-producing and self-annihilating, that I shall explore in this chapter.
