MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In the later work of Michel Foucault such as The Courage of Truth, “What is Enlightenment?”, and “Hermeneutic of the Subject” the author argues that through parrhesia, free or candid speech, a person can practice care of the self by gaining self knowledge and becoming a self mastering. Once a person becomes self-mastering they can heal their own traumas and personal problems, reject false notions of the self created by others, and become enlightened to the institutional restraints on identity. Through enlightenment one can see through the illusion of universal humanity and identity created by institutions of power such as religion, the sciences, gender, and others. Thus, a person who is enlightened can exit from systems of powers that regulate human identity and form a state of being free from hermeneutic readings of how a person should behave. In Sylvia Plath’s 1963 novel The Bell Jar and Margaret Atwood’s book The Edible Woman released in 1969, characters Esther and Marian use practices of binge eating and anorexia to reject hermeneutic readings of women, engaging in care of the self in order to overcome oppressive gender norms. Esther uses binge eating and anorexia to cope with anxieties of being the object of the male gaze and having an unknown future, where Marian becomes anorexic to challenge the expectations of marriage by reclaiming her body and refusing to lose herself in marriage. Esther’s and Marian’s practices of disordered eating therefore not only help the women to achieve care of self by managing potential traumatic situations, but also to become enlightened to the falsity of gender norms and gain the strength to exit from institutional powers.