Mouthing disgust and pleasure in eating disorders: the sensorial agency and gendered dimensions of consuming bodies

Abstract

This article explores the complex sensorial encounters that people with eating disorders have in response to their mouths, food, eating, and embodiment. We argue that relationships to food, perceived primarily in clinical and psychological terms of control and discipline, ignore sensorial and generative dimensions of embodiment and the associated affective agency of hungers, pleasures, and disgust. Through analysis of the filmed performance of Untitled (The Party), we examine how the mouth for people with eating disorders embodies a metaphorical space of disgust, but also pleasure. As a soft, moist bodily opening, the mouth presents a symbolic space that can be filled with sensorial engagements of touch, disgust, pleasure, and taste. It is through the materiality of cream as used in the performance, and Irigaray's morphological mediation of bodily dimensions and language via the mucous touch, that we present new sensorial engagements with eating disorders.