Within the Frame: Self-Starvation and the Making of Culture

This collection of essays originated from the international series of Framing Disease Workshops, led by Prof. George Rousseau, leading scholar in the medical humanities. The workshops and collection focused on the cultural understanding of illness within an interdisciplinary framework. The book sets itself within the growing literature of interdisciplinary studies in the history of medicine and is both a sequel and a critical departure from Charles Rosenberg and Janet Golden’s 'Framing Disease: Studies in Cultural History'. Key to the collection is an analysis of the discourses that construct disease across history, and the use of the notion of frame/framing as a methodological tool for deconstructing cultural tenets. By focusing on a late 17th century case, my essay deconstructs contemporary medical and popular interpretations of self-starvation, pointing to a process of enculturation of the disorder that is still recognisable for anorexia nervosa: a transition from cultural practice to medical condition. The essay is based on research into historical documents and offers a new approach to the reading of such documents by locating them within a cultural historical framework, highlighting narrative tropes and cultural patterns. A book proposal on the cultural history of self-starvation is under consideration. The essay was first presented at the Oxford workshop (2001) of the Framing Disease group (of which I was member) and, after publication, to the Anglo-American Conference of Historians (London, 2003)