The Unbearable Lightness of never-eat. Part One: Saints and Witches

Abstract

Anorexia is a disease of modernity. Already in the late sixteenth century, Rosa de Santa María subjected his body to hunger and torture as a means to approach God. He got used to eating unappetizing and increasingly in smaller amounts. But in this disease there are two opposite poles: Paris, the capital of fashion and extreme thinness, Biafra, the capital of hunger and skeletal bodies, the land of the dead. Beyond the purely symbolic, there is a tragedy that began long ago and whose manifestations are today as a grotesque caricature of human stupidity that led, and still holds-a million girls almost die of starvation. But in the past, the situation was different socio-cultural, especially in the European region, but the disease was always the same: systematic deprivation of food with high risk of health and life itself. Throughout history there have been false anorexic, famous / as anorexia (an "example" which look), and witches, witches themselves. Some have come to say that it seems that the symptoms of this disease are not specific to postmodern times as they have been described and denominated in different periods of history: witches, saints, hysterical anorexia seem to be some names that have been problematic given that these women do not fit the dominant discourse of the time.