'Anorexia Nervosa' : asceticism, differentiation, government

This paper looks at the severe fasting practices most commonly found among young women. Almost all explanations for this behaviour centre around the notion of the pathological condition 'anorexia nervosa'. However, food asceticism has a well-documented history, particularly when it concerns religious fasting. In ancient Greece, dietary asceticism constituted an important part of the means by which individuals constructed an acceptable 'self'. Ascetic fasting then later resurfaced at various historical moments and in various different places — such as amongst medieval religious women and, in a broader way, amongst contemporary young women. It is argued that these practices have traditionally formed part of the mechanisms by which differentiation by age and sex occurs. Overall, it is hoped that this analysis will permit not only a different focus on 'anorexia nervosa', but also on some of the ways in which young people become gendered.

Asceticism, differentiation, government : 'anorexia nervosa' as an achievement

As with the ancient Greeks, the `self' is not something to be discovered, it is something to be created. Practices such as ascetic fasting are not expressions of the struggle between the authentic self and the external world, they are the very practices by which a `self' is formed.

Fasting and the female body : from the ascetic to the pathological

This paper will examine the literature on ‘anorexia nervosa’, and argue that it is underpinned by three fundamental assumptions. First, ‘anorexia nervosa’ is a reflection of the mismatch between true ‘inner self’ and the external ‘false self’, the latter self being the distorted product of a male dominated society. Second, the explanation for the severe fasting practices constitutive of ‘anorexia nervosa’ (a new social problem) is to be found within the binary opposition of resistance/conformity to contemporary cultural expectations. Finally, ‘anorexia nervosa’ is a problem which exists in nature (i.e., independently of analysis). It was eventually discovered, named and explained. This paper will problematise each of these assumptions in turn, and in doing so, it will propose an alternative way of understanding contemporary fasting practices.

Re-conceiving the good life : the key to sustainable globalisation

Resource-intensive, high-carbon, Western lifestyles are frequently criticised as unsustainable and deeply unsatisfying. However, these lifestyles are still attractive to the majority of Westerners and to a high proportion of the developing world’s middle classes. This paper argues that the imminent threat of catastrophic climate change constitutes an immediate political, economic and ethical challenge for citizens of the developed world that cannot be tackled by appeals to asceticism or restraint. There can be no solution to climate change until sustainable conceptions of the good life are developed that those in the west want to live and which others might want to live. While the ultimate solution to climate change is the development of low carbon lifestyles, it is important that government initiatives, governance arrangements and economic incentives support rather than undermine that search. Like the global financial crisis, the climate change crisis also demonstrates what happens when weaknesses in national, corporate and professional governance are exacerbated by weaknesses in global governance. In tackling the latter, it is critical the mistakes now evidenced in the former are avoided – including a rethinking of carbon market and carbon tax alternatives. It is also critical that individuals must take responsibility for their actions as consumers, voters and investors.

Reconceiving the good life : the key to sustainable globalisation

Resource-intensive, high-carbon, Western lifestyles are frequently criticised as unsustainable and deeply unsatisfying. However, these lifestyles are still attractive to the majority of Westerners and to a high proportion of the developing world’s middle classes. This paper argues that the imminent threat of catastrophic climate change constitutes an immediate political, economic and ethical challenge for citizens of the developed world that cannot be tackled by appeals to asceticism or restraint. There can be no solution to climate change until sustainable conceptions of the good life are developed that those in the west want to live and which others might want to live. While the ultimate solution to climate change is the development of low carbon lifestyles, it is important that government initiatives, governance arrangements and economic incentives support rather than undermine that search. Like the global financial crisis, the climate change crisis also demonstrates what happens when weaknesses in national, corporate and professional governance are exacerbated by weaknesses in global governance. In tackling the latter, it is critical the mistakes now evidenced in the former are avoided – including a rethinking of carbon market and carbon tax alternatives. It is also critical that individuals must take responsibility for their actions as consumers, voters and investors.

Architecture post mortem : the diastolic architecture of decline, dystopia, and death

Architecture Post Mortem surveys architecture’s encounter with death, decline, and ruination following late capitalism. As the world moves closer to an economic abyss that many perceive to be the death of capital, contraction and crisis are no longer mere phases of normal market fluctuations, but rather the irruption of the unconscious of ideology itself. Post mortem is that historical moment wherein architecture’s symbolic contract with capital is put on stage, naked to all. Architecture is not irrelevant to fiscal and political contagion as is commonly believed; it is the victim and penetrating analytical agent of the current crisis. As the very apparatus for modernity’s guilt and unfulfilled drives-modernity’s debt-architecture is that ideological element that functions as a master signifier of its own destruction, ordering all other signifiers and modes of signification beneath it. It is under these conditions that architecture theory has retreated to an “Alamo” of history, a final desert outpost where history has been asked to transcend itself. For architecture’s hoped-for utopia always involves an apocalypse. This timely collection of essays reformulates architecture’s relation to modernity via the operational death-drive: architecture is but a passage between life and death. This collection includes essays by Kazi K. Ashraf, David Bertolini, Simone Brott, Peggy Deamer, Didem Ekici, Paul Emmons, Donald Kunze, Todd McGowan, Gevork Hartoonian, Nadir Lahiji, Erika Naginski, and Dennis Maher. Contents: Introduction: ‘the way things are’, Donald Kunze; Driven into the public: the psychic constitution of space, Todd McGowan; Dead or alive in Joburg, Simone Brott; Building in-between the two deaths: a post mortem manifesto, Nadir Lahiji; Kant, Sade, ethics and architecture, David Bertolini; Post mortem: building deconstruction, Kazi K. Ashraf; The slow-fast architecture of love in the ruins, Donald Kunze; Progress: re-building the ruins of architecture, Gevork Hartoonian; Adrian Stokes: surface suicide, Peggy Deamer; A window to the soul: depth in the early modern section drawing, Paul Emmons; Preliminary thoughts on Piranesi and Vico, Erika Naginski; architectural asceticism and austerity, Didem Ekici; 900 miles to Paradise, and other afterlives of architecture, Dennis Maher; Index.