Abject Relations: Everyday Worlds of Anorexia (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780813546896)

Abject Relations presents an alternative approach to anorexia, long considered the epitome of a Western obsession with individualism, beauty, self-control, and autonomy. Through detailed ethnographic investigations, Megan Warin looks at the heart of what it means to live with anorexia on a daily basis. Participants describe difficulties with social relatedness, not being at home in their body, and feeling disgusting and worthless. For them, anorexia becomes a seductive and empowering practice that cleanses bodies of shame and guilt, becomes a friend and support, and allows them to forge new social relations.

Unraveling anorexia's complex relationships and contradictions, Warin provides a new theoretical perspective rooted in a socio-cultural context of bodies and gender. Abject Relations departs from conventional psychotherapy approaches and offers a different "logic," one that involves the shifting forces of power, disgust, and desire and provides new ways of thinking that may have implications for future treatment regimes.

Author: Megan Warin
ISBN-10: 0813546893
ISBN-13: 9780813546896
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Language: English
Published: 11/01/2009
Pages: 248
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.11lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.69d

Review Citation(s):
Chronicle of Higher Education 01/08/2010 pg. 17
Choice 04/01/2010