Abstract

Self-Starvation

In Performance Research

Becoming Anorexia: The pathologization of “self-harm” in performance
Adriana Disman

Political Paradigms of Hunger: Force-feeding and the choreography of carceral power
Patrick Anderson

Lady Tyger: A legacy starved into existence
Sarah Crews and Solomon Lennox

In Global Performance Studies

Silver Tableaux: Memoir vivant
Caitlin Mary Margarett Sørensdatter

Claiming Agency in the Disappearing Body: Performing hunger as silent resistance and the decolonial self
Serap Erincin

This section includes writing on both hunger strikes and anorexia. While one may be tempted to think of anorexia as pathological and hunger strikes as volitional, all four of our authors articulate mechanisms of agency and control at work in the denial of sustenance.

Adriana Disman draws our attention to the dangers of pathologizing and thereby censoring performances of self-wounding on the part of both social media and academic scholarship. Similarly, Caitlin Mary Margarett Sørensdatter condemns the social media platforms that monetize anorectic behavior, arguing that the “recovery construct” often neglects joy, desire and pleasure of the anorectic individual.

Patrick Anderson’s essay revisits his earlier work on self-starvation to consider the state’s monopoly on hunger through both force feeding, as well as considering philanthropy as a form of policing.

In their essay about “Lady Tyger”, Sarah Crews and Solomon Lennox consider the ways that the boxing champion’s hunger strike performed “intersectional activism” while Serap Ericin demonstrates how educators in Turkey used their hunger strike to subvert the dynamics of state-controlled hunger.