Disciplining “docile bodies”: foucauldian insights into eating disorders in Lesléa Newman's fat chance

Abstract EN

This paper draws on Michel Foucault's concepts of "discipline" and "docile bodies" as he theorizes them in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975) to address the predicament of adolescent girls with eating disorders.

Although Foucault's book is primarily concerned with the changes that occurred in the Western penal system, his perception of the "docile body" may be well-appropriated to examine the discursive forces that are meted out on eating disordered bodies.

Women with eating disordered bodies, as exemplified by the protagonist of Lesléa Newman's novel Fat Chance (1996), and her anorexic/bulimic class-mate, may thus be said to possess docile bodies; a byproduct of sociocultural norms and beauty standards that discipline women's perceptions of their appearance and body size, and from which they can hardly be liberated.

Bringing Foucauldian ideas to bear on eating disordered bodies does not propose liberating them; rather, it serves only to bring new insights into viewing them as the object of application of disciplinary power.