Shape-shifting discourses of anorexia nervosa: reconstituting psychopathology

HARDIN PK. Nursing Inquiry 2003; 10 : 209–217 Shape‐shifting discourses of anorexia nervosa: reconstituting psychopathology This article explores how the circuitous relationship between individuals, the media, and discursive systems replicate and reinforce the act of self‐starvation in young women. Using a feminist poststructuralist methodology, the focus of this article is on how discourses and institutional practices operate to position young women who take up the subject position of wanting to be diagnosed as anorexic. Utilizing data from online accounts and individual interviews, I attend to the ways in which young women are institutionally positioned as ‘anorexics’ and the effects that those positions have on their behaviors, in addition to reinforcing institutional practices that construct anorexia nervosa. Questions addressed through this inquiry are: How do institutional practices create and continue to constitute ‘anorexia nervosa’? How do discourses operate to position young women such that they are either included and/or excluded into the category of ‘anorexia nervosa’? What are the effects and consequences that emanate from these positionings?