Måltidens ljus och hungerns rus : Kroppar, känslor och mat i Bröd och mjölk av Karolina Ramqvist och Ut ur min kropp av Sara Meidell

Sammanfattning: This essay explores two fictional works about problematic eating by female writers in Sweden published in 2022: Bröd och mjölk by Karolina Ramqvist and Ut ur min kropp by Sara Meidell. The study aims to analyze how bodies and subjects are shaped through food, eating, and starvation. The questions of the essay are: How do the fictional works use emotions to show how bodies are formed? How are bodies shaped through contact with human, non-human, and abstract objects? How do the fictional works use aesthetics to negotiate the borders of the bodies? To answer my questions, I use Sara Ahmed's theory about the relationality of emotions and affective economies; I use Judith Butler's theory about performativity, bodily ego, and culturally intelligible subjects; I also use Donna Haraway's theory about situated knowledges and the hybrid cyborg figure. I use a close textual analysis to explore the works, which are handled like extended material. Therefore, this is not a comparative study. This study shows that Bröd och mjölk uses Julia Kristeva's psychoanalytic construction of the semiotic to show how a subject can be created by a continuous flow of pleasure. It also shows how the semiotic and the intake of food can be regarded as a discourse, and therefore a regulating force. By that, food takes place as an agent of the inside of cultural discourse. Ut ur min kropp uses single narrative stories in a subversive way to show how the female protagonist uses autonomy as a resistance against a patriarchal society. Through starvation, the protagonist claims herself as a transcendental agent free from the body. The resistance shows itself as contradictory, and by that Ut ur min kropp says that autonomy is a story available for bodies that fit in a certain narrative. Therefore the study shows how food, eating, and starvation can be viewed as material, psychic, and fictional relationships between women and their surroundings.