ABSTRACT
This chapter delineates the poetics of hunger and disgust incorporating both "high" and "low" cultural forms and practices. At a time when the body has clearly moved to the centre stage of art history, gender theory, anthropology and cultural studies alike, it is hardly surprising that such a method has been impacted by the ever-expanding body of Freudian, (post-)Bakhtinian and (post-) Deleuzian critical theory. While focusing on corporeality, such research typically argues for a reconsideration of the body itself as a discursive and social construct within the dominant institutions of knowledge and power. The chapter talks about specific cases of hunger activism, Shelley's radical vegetarianism, nineteenth-century miracle diet cures, Kafka's "Ein Hungerkünstler" ["The Hunger Artist"], and Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Tale from Wall Street". It includes an extended discussion of the figure of the hungry clerk, an anti-hero of social and political dissent that haunts the works of Melville, Gogol, Dickens, Kafka, Huysmans, Poritzky and Duhamel.
