Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Unspeakable Bodies: Erasure, Embodiment and the Pro-ana Community.
AU - Ferreday, D.
N1 - RAE_import_type : Journal article RAE_uoa_type : Sociology
PY - 2003/9
Y1 - 2003/9
N2 - In this article, I explore the extent to which the `virtual community' has been imagined as coming into being through acts of erasure that create unmarked citizens. In contrast, `pro-ana' websites that celebrate eating disorders aim to create a community in which a sense of collectivity is constituted precisely through the body, specifically the anorexic body. By encouraging members to speak out, these communities aim to subvert the economy of difference through which the anorexic body is always positioned as `other', as the body that `has' difference. I argue that the public outcry surrounding pro-ana communities represents an appeal to censorship as a means by which, as Kristeva argues, outsiders might be `ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable' in order to reinstate the notion of consensus through the suppression of some forms of difference.
AB - In this article, I explore the extent to which the `virtual community' has been imagined as coming into being through acts of erasure that create unmarked citizens. In contrast, `pro-ana' websites that celebrate eating disorders aim to create a community in which a sense of collectivity is constituted precisely through the body, specifically the anorexic body. By encouraging members to speak out, these communities aim to subvert the economy of difference through which the anorexic body is always positioned as `other', as the body that `has' difference. I argue that the public outcry surrounding pro-ana communities represents an appeal to censorship as a means by which, as Kristeva argues, outsiders might be `ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable' in order to reinstate the notion of consensus through the suppression of some forms of difference.
KW - anorexia
KW - belonging
KW - censorship
KW - eating disorders
KW - internet
KW - virtual
U2 - 10.1177/13678779030063003
DO - 10.1177/13678779030063003
M3 - Journal article
VL - 6
SP - 277
EP - 295
JO - International Journal of Cultural Studies
JF - International Journal of Cultural Studies
SN - 1460-356X
IS - 3
ER -