This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Ferreday, D. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Unspeakable Bodies

Erasure, Embodiment and the Pro-Ana Community

Lancaster University, England, d.ferreday{at}lancaster.ac.uk

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.

Key Words: anorexia • belonging • censorship • eating disorders • internet • virtual

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				A. Miah Genetics, cyberspace and bioethics: why not a public engagement with ethics? Public Understanding of Science, October 1, 2005; 14(4): 409 - 421. [Abstract] [PDF]