Deepali Mallya M
Assistant Professor, Christ (deemed to be) University, Bangalore, Karnataka. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-7760-3593. Email: deepali.mallya@christuniversity.in
Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s12n6
Abstract
Depriving the body from eating and developing a phobia about food is a vital attribute of the neurotic ailment, Anorexia Nervosa. Conspicuously, this is labeled as a female disorder. Various studies have examined that the germination point of this disorder is substantially based on the social presumptions such as, “Thin is beautiful.” In the psychoanalytical sense, this can be a response to ‘lack’ or ‘deficiency’ communicated through Lacanian Symbolic Order. This ‘lack’ unconsciously drives the female to look or become ‘thin.’ As proven in the various studies, this disciplinary project is marked by unattainability. Hence, this desire only ensues in female dejection and shame; further, it also restores her ‘deficiency.’ Nevertheless, in the last decade, new-media tools may have transformed the dynamics of female bodily-presumptions and their disordered eating. Various body-positive new-media handles seem to have deposed the Lacanian ‘lack’ and the ‘Symbolic Order’ only to replace them with an unrestrained and real female language. In this lieu, the paper theoretically critiques the Lacanian notions of female ‘Lack’ in the new-media domain. This study attempts to reconceptualise the trajectory of disordered eating and the female body-images from the twentieth century through the twenty-first century (i.e., with the augmentation of new-media).
Keywords: body-image, disorder-eating, female-language, Lack, new-media, Symbolic-order