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An embodied belonging : amenorrhea and anorexic subjectivities
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Eli, Karin (2014) An embodied belonging : amenorrhea and anorexic subjectivities. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 1 (1). p. 53. doi:10.17157/mat.1.1.200 ISSN 2405-691X.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.17157/mat.1.1.200
Abstract
Until the publication of the DSM-V in 2013, amenorrhea was one of the four criteria that comprised anorexia nervosa. Diagnostically, amenorrhea played a definitional role, dividing the ‘strictly’ anorexic from their ‘subthreshold’, menstruating peers; however, the implications that menstrual cessation, and menstruation itself, held for the lived realities and identities of women with anorexia remain under-explored. In this article, I examine the positioning of menstruation and amenorrhea in the narratives of Israeli women diagnosed with eating disorders during the eras of the DSM-IV and DSM-IV-TR. I find that the participants’ narrative uses of amenorrhea mirrored, and at times explicitly engaged with, the official diagnosis of anorexia nervosa. Notably, although the participants invoked amenorrhea as a defining sign of illness, they did not cast menstruation as a sign of health rather, they spoke of their menstrual periods as contradicting their anorexic-identified selves. Amenorrhea, then, emerged as central in the embodied making of anorexic subjectivities.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Medicine > Warwick Medical School > Health Sciences Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Medicine > Warwick Medical School > Health Sciences > Social Science & Systems in Health (SSSH) Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Medicine > Warwick Medical School |
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Journal or Publication Title: | Medicine Anthropology Theory | ||||
ISSN: | 2405-691X | ||||
Official Date: | 2014 | ||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 1 | ||||
Number: | 1 | ||||
Page Range: | p. 53 | ||||
DOI: | 10.17157/mat.1.1.200 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) |
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