ABSTRACT
Anorexia, considered as a drama that plays itself out within the sphere of orality, implies an analogy between loss of appetite for food and loss of appetite for speech, where the agent of this loss is extremely difficult, perhaps impossible to pin down. Incontinent pleasure threatens the singularity of the subject's narrative by alienating the desire on which it is founded. A permanent now of displeasure sets itself up as a solution to the excessive present of consumerism. The satisfaction of consumption is transformed into its opposite, a plenitude to be derived from non-consumption. These seem to be the general parameters of the anti-capitalist reading of anorexia. To test these ideas against a narrative fast that prolongs an episode of failed consummation, the authors turn to Dickens and his extraordinary creation, Miss Havisham. Her grief, anger and frustration are the emotional capital on which she is determined to realise some added value.
