Introspaces of Subversion vs Ideological: Spaces of Evil in Eavan Boland’s ‘Anorexic’
In: Illuminating the Dark Side: Evil, Women and the FeminineSearch for other papers by Adel Sliti in
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This paper seeks to address the discourse of anorexia in Eavan Boland’s poem ‘Anorexic.’ Specifically, it will argue that the medical terminology of anorexia modulates into a feminine space in which the persona voices her aversion to a western public culture or social ‘imaginaire’ which associates women with evil. The feminine body becomes a meta-space which reflects upon itself as a discursive site of cultural body and corporeal body. The body extends beyond its corporeality as a physical body to become a sign or linguistic icon inflected by ideology. Having an exclusive focus on the body, she establishes a body-bound space, a bodily map made up of a skein of body details which turn into signifiers and cultural markers or indicators.