Abnormal appetites:
Foucault, Atwood, and the normalization of an animal-based diet
Keywords:
Michel Foucault, Margaret Atwood, vegetarianism, veganism, sexual politics of meat, orthorexia nervosaAbstract
In his lecture series Abnormal, Michel Foucault argues that the abnormal individual is the descendant of the monster, and that the monster came in two types: sexual and alimentary. While Foucault traces the genealogy of the sexual monster into the sexually abnormal individual, the alimentary monster is forgotten. This paper thus takes up Foucault‘ s work on normalization in order to consider the genealogy of that other monstrous heir, the alimentarily abnormal individual, and pursues it into the twenty-first century. In particular, this paper examines the pathologization of vegetarianism and veganism in the writings of Margaret Atwood and in the invention of a new mental illness, orthorexia nervosa.
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