ABSTRACT
In the medical model, the body of the subject is the passive tablet on which disorder is inscribed. Deciphering that inscription is usually seen as a matter of determining the “cause” of the disorder; sometimes (as with psychoanalysis) interpretation of symptoms will be involved. But always the process requires a trained-that is to say, highly specialized-professional whose expertise alone can unlock the secrets of the disordered body. For the feminist analyst, by contrast, the disordered body, like all bodies, is engaged in a process of making meaning, of “labor on the body.” From this perspective, anorexia (for example) is never merely regressive, never merely a fall into illness and chaos. Nor is it facilitated simply by bedazzlement by cultural images, “indoctrination” by what happens, arbitrarily, to be in fashion at this time. Rather, the “relentless pursuit of excessive thinness” is an attempt to embody certain values, to create a body that will speak for the self in a meaningful and powerful way.
