Unrecoverable? Prescriptions and Possibilities for Eating Disorder Recovery

Abstract

In this chapter, we explore eating problems through a feminist, post-sfructuralist frame, examining how EDs come to impact and interact with women's mental health. Our focus is on how discourses work to open or close the option of recovery. We begin by providing a history of 'mainstream' conceptualizations of EDs, then turn to examine feminist understandings, highlighting the problematics of the normal/ pathological divide. We attend to recent scholarship on health communications as body pedagogies or biopedagogies, the loose collection of information, advice and instmction about bodies and health, often moralizing or lecturing in tone, that works to control people using praise and shame alongside expert knowledge to urge conformity to eating and weight norms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)