Control over one’s own body is the last power of the isolated
Evidence
Survivors are reluctant to admit that anorexia, which in the end leads to invalidity and death, is along the way a path of pleasure and power: it is the power that confers pleasure, however freakish and fragile the gratification may seem. When you are isolated, your back to the social wall, control over your own ingestion and excretion is all you have left; this is why professional torturers make sure to remove it. — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 214
Categorization
- XREF: Reinforces the theme from earlier readings: how the powerless preserve agency through bodily means. — connects to: External surveillance becomes internalized as self-imposed bodily discipline — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 512; Hostile society alienates the colonized subject from his own body; Extreme acts of self-sacrifice can function as argument rather than abandonment of it — Jamal Awil, The Whispering Archive: The Complete…, 569 (+3 more)
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 214
Broader Connections
- Expanded social circles throw the individual back upon himself
#expands(0.85) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 699 - Hostile society alienates the colonized subject from his own body
#expands(0.70) - Extreme acts of self-sacrifice can function as argument rather than abandonment of it
#expands(0.65) — Jamal Awil, The Whispering Archive, 569 - External surveillance becomes internalized as self-imposed bodily discipline
#expands(0.55) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 512 - Discoursing on power differs fundamentally from being silenced by it
#responds-to(0.50)