Upload
calfrancesco
View
11
Download
2
Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
Il corpo e Deleuze
Citation preview
Mutant Spiritualities in a Secular Age: The 'Fasting Body' and the Hunger for Pure ImmanenceAuthor(s): Jo NashSource: Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Fall, 2006), pp. 310-327Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27512941 .
Accessed: 29/04/2013 04:45
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Religion andHealth.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 45, No. 3, Fall 2006 (? 2006) DOI: 10.1007/sl0943-006-9035-8
Mutant Spiritualities in a Secular Age:
The Tasting Body' and the Hunger for Pure Immanence
JO NASH
ABSTRACT: This article will explore the 'return of the repressed' of secular materialism, in the
form of 'mutant spiritualities', with a particular focus on the significance of the fasting body, once
an accepted product of ascetic spiritual practice, and now cultivated by those seeking a range of
experiences; including the anorexic, the model or celebrity trading in beauty and elegance, and
those in search of a new age spiritual enlightenment. I argue that further exploration of the range of contexts in which the fasting body is cultivated reveal that what is desired is a lost experience of
the body as an expanded field of energetic confluences, an assemblage of aects in the manner of
Deleuze and Guattari's 'body without organs'. Such an experience of the body is termed as
expanded, light and even ecstatic by those following fasting regimes, in that it overcomes the
experience of the body as 'heavy', burdensome or limiting. The word ecstasy derives from the
Greek 'ekstasis', meaning to stand outside oneself. Through a textual analysis of web content of
cyber communities dedicated to these food practices, I suggest that fasting expresses a hunger for
'self transcendence' as pure immanence, that is both subversive of secular materialism and limited
by narcissistic pathology.
KEY WORDS: fasting; spirituality; ecstasy; Deleuze; psychoanalysis.
Introduction
This article will explore what I propose is the 'return of the repressed' of
secular materialism, in the form of 'mutant spiritualities', with a particular
Jo Nash, PGDip Ed, PhD (Psychotherapy Studies), MA., BA (Hons) has taught on the Masters in Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Sheffield since 1998 and became Course Director in
October 2001. Before becoming an academic she worked in mental health services for over
15 years as a student nurse, social worker, advocate, trainer and researcher. She is currently
working on a series of essays on the application of psychodynamic theory to the study of social
processes, in relation to new spiritualities, religion and political processes, and gender and mental
health. Correspondence to Dr Jo Nash, Mental Health Section, School of Health and Related
Research, University of Sheffield. Regent Court, 30 Regent Place, Sheffield, UK: SI 4DA. [email protected].
310 ? 2006 Blanton-Peale Institute
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Jo Nash 311
focus on the significance of the fasting body, once a product of ascetic spiritual
practice (Walker-Bynum, 1987), and now cultivated by those seeking a range of experiences; including the anorexic, the model or celebrity trading in beauty and elegance, and those in search of a new age spiritual enlightenment. I will
argue that further exploration of the range of contexts in which the fasting
body is cultivated reveal that what is desired is a lost experience of the body as
an expanded affective field of confluences, (Deleuze & Guattari, 1971, 1980)
rather than as alienated, limited and burdensome.
It is a matter of interest that the communities of people involved in these
practices choose to communicate primarily via the web, using computer mediated technologies that prevent the physical presentation of the repellent emaciated body. In that sense the disembodied networks of communication
surrounding these practices further enhance opportunities for those involved
to sustain socially marginal behaviour that may otherwise invite censure,
rejection, or judgement in a face to face setting. However, I do not wish to
dwell upon the social dynamics of the cyber community, or the social pre sentation of the 'cyberself in this essay. Here I am primarily interested in the
meaning making processes at work in these communities of like minded
individuals who share their desires, values, experiences to sustain their
commitment to extreme, and socially marginal, food practices. I suggest, that
through an exploratory textual analysis of the hypertexts produced by cyber communities dedicated to these practices, we can observe how fasting enables
this shift in existential experience towards the body as an energy field, an
assemblage of affects in the manner of Deleuze and Guattari's 'body without
organs' or BwO (1971), rather than a discrete, boundaried corporeal entity. Such an experience of the body is termed as expanded, light and even
ecstatic by those following fasting regimes (Rahn, 1928; Wulff, 1997), in that it overcomes the experience of the body as 'heavy', burdensome or limiting. The
word ecstasy derives from 'ekstasis', a Greek word meaning to stand outside
oneself. It is this desire for 'self transcendence' involving the dissolution of
boundaries between inner and outer, body and mind (and the proliferating dualisms attendant on this primary existential split) that is sought, I suggest,
by those engaged in extreme fasting practices. During fasting, the experience of the body in time and space is altered so one becomes predominantly located in the present moment. What is desired is what Deleuze called an experience
of'pure immanence' (Deleuze, 1995), a sense of lightness and being at one with
the here and now, which is usually reserved for the contemplatively gifted amongst us. This is why fasting has been advocated by many religions as a
means of enhancing meditation and contemplative prayer practice, by pro
moting a sense of attentiveness to the present which is inevitable if we are
battling with hunger (Rahn, 1928). I will also explore how the fasting body has become a site for the cultural
inscription of a depleted and starved inner life characteristic of narcissistic
functioning (Symington, 1993, 1998), such that the exterior body image, or
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
312 Journal of Religion and Health
corporeal surface has usurped the inner world of affect, cognition and lan
guage as a signifier and a chosen vehicle of self-expression (Kirkby, 1997).
Body dysmorphia is an emerging psychosomatic pathology particular to the
postmodern West (Thompson et al., 2004). In this paper I suggest that when
words fail to communicate our alienation, fragmentation, disintegration, then our feelings about, and experiences of, our bodies write these dissatisfactions
large, through the cultural inscription of body enhancement practices as a
means of mediating affect and intersubjective experience. This includes
depriving the body of food and/or over exercising to satisfy the hunger for a
'pure immanence' (Deleuze, 1995) inscribed in the lines of flight that map out
the desirability of the 'fasting body'. In political terms the fasting body is also a
site of resistance to the cultural hegemony of the consumption ethic, sub
verting the imperative to ingest, process and excrete as a primary cultural or
natural activity in what Kroker calls our 'excremental' post modern West
(Kroker & Cook, 1986). The fasting body writes large a paradox at the heart of
Western culture that is obsessed with weight control and yet driven by excess
consumption. It is at once a powerful symbol of the human ability to resist
hegemonic inscriptions of desire, in this case the consumption ethic, and yet it
also acquiesces in the received inscription of 'thinness' as Western culture's
ideal of the body beautiful. The fasting body writes large this cultural paradox of consumption and control through the transformation of the constitutive
affects from inside out, to create a body-without-organs, a body that becomes
much more than the sum of its parts. This body signifies a subjectivity that
exceeds and subverts the confines and limits of language, by defying yet also
inscribing culturally dominant desires, through the wordless cipher of the
'telling flesh' (Kirkby, 1997). I also wish to use psychoanalytic ideas to approach an understanding of the
emergence of the fasting body as a dominant aesthetic, by which I mean a
striving for a sublime subjective affective experience as well as the achieve
ment of a particular aesthetic form. To do this I will review the cultural sig nificance of the ancient spiritual practice of fasting for westerners, (which remains an accepted spiritual practice in the main world religions of Judaism,
Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism) through the historical work of Walker
Bynum (1987). This article will explore the psychology of such a practice, and
how this has mutated under secularisation through a process of dualistic
polarisation, into what has been reconstructed as a health denying practice or
pathology, known as anorexia; and a practice of health benefit, such as dietic
cleansing or health fasting, the extreme end of which is based upon a yogic inedia called 'breatharianism' or living on light' (Jasmuheen, 1998). I will
suggest that voluntary inedias have been transformed through a process of
secularisation, into a polarised set of food practices that have been socially reconstructed as both pathological and curative. It will also be argued that it is
the social reconstruction of fasting as a new age health/spiritual practice that
enables it to be construed as 'other' to anorexia, not as an eating disorder, but
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Jo Nash 313
as a reordered food practice, of health benefit to adherents. As such, I argue that these voluntary inedias exist on a continuum of pathological to curative
'mutant spiritualities', inscribed in the flesh of the fasting body. In exploring the psychology of these voluntary inedias I wish to try and
answer the following primary question. Is there any commonality of experi
ence, in terms of goals and objectives, involved in the various forms of fasting that can help trace a lineage of desire to overcome hunger, from the ancient
ascetic cross-cultural religious practice, to a polarised set of diseased and
curative, yet secularised, food practices today? I propose that the use of Deleuzian theory, in conjunction with Bipnian ideas
(Bion, 1967,1970) will aid an exploration of how this secularisation of spiritual
practices takes place. I want to use Deleuze and Guattarri's concepts to per form a preliminary theoretical exploration of the health denying pathology of
fasting known as anorexia and the health enhancing therapy of fasting
adopted by breatharians. I will also be exploring what this might mean in the
context of advanced western societies increasingly obsessed by the role of food
in the construction of body image, particularly in relation to size, beauty and
ageing, existing alongside the persistent problem of world hunger.
Mind, body and spiritual fasting: from Freud to Deleuze
In a post-Nietschean age, now that 'God is dead' as the arbiter of truth, and
the measure of all things, Deleuze and Guattarri show us how Freud substi
tutes the triune Judao-Christian godhead with the triangular constellation of
Oedipus (Freud, S. 1915-17), with what they call the 'holy family' of 'daddy mommy me' (Deleuze and Guattarri, 1971). Pre-industrial accounts of how we
develop into human persons were regulated by religion, faith and the divine, the highest human state being holiness meaning literally, wholeness (Malony, 1983). This was characterised by the human person attaining spiritual unity
with the godhead, which in Christian western societies, comprised of the tri une godhead of the father, the son and the holy spirit. In a godless universe Freud's secularised 'revelation', (and I use that term because I want us to remember that his theory came to him in a dream), shows us that instead, we are moulded by the Oedipal trinity of the 'holy family', which passes on the
policies, morality and socio-cultural milieu of the patrifocal, quasi-incestuous, neurotic culture in which it thrives.
For Freud and his followers, most of the ills of Western society can all be traced back to an inadequately internalised Oedipus in the lives of individuals,
who then go to act-out this unresolved familial complex in their wider rela
tionships with others, in the institutions and groups of the wider world. This
inadequately internalised Oedipus leads to neurosis, which it is the job of the
psychoanalyst to uncover and correct. This working through of the Oedipus complex takes place through the transferential relationship between analyst
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
314 Journal of Religion and Health
and analysand, with the clinician occupying the position of 'locus parentis',
evoking the return of unconscious unresolved Oedipal material. The vicissi
tudes of the transference are tracked and analysed in order to resolve the
neurosis. This analytic process aims at the full acceptance and internalisation
of Oedipal Law, that is the prohibition of incest, and the redirection of this
'original' desire into a genital sexual relationship, as the cure. Only this pro cess can transform 'hysterical misery into ordinary unhappiness', the explicit aim of psychoanalysis, because, for Freud, ordinary unhappiness is the norm.
Marcuse (1956, 1972), Fromm (1942, 1962), and other revolutionary and/or
socialist psychoanalytic thinkers, would not disagree that this is the most
efficient equilibrium we can expect in secular, bourgeois, capitalist society, but
then we will return to this later. In another kind of society, perhaps there
would be other possibilities. For Freud, however, those who evade Oedipus, are destined thereby to
occupy a range of marginal social positions as perhaps psychotics, mystics,
ecstatics, revolutionaries, poets and artists or a combination of these. Such
people, may not know why they are the way they are, but, say Deleuze and
Guattarri, Freud shows us that it is due to an evasion of the demands of
Oedipus, leading to a failure to love and work as others do, and accept that
ordinary unhappiness is as good as it gets. Those who are unable or unwilUng to conform to Oedipal law are the craziest and most immature of us all says
Freud.
However, within this paper, I want to suggest that the non-Oedipalised
perhaps entertain different desires to the dominant social political moraUty within which they develop and Uve. The outright pathologising of these anti
Oedipal desires risks diminishing the richly creative seams mined by those on
the margins of society. I contend, using Deleuze and Guattarri, that such
desires are compelled by a different kind of knowing, archaically embodied
(Nash, 2000), that there is something other than ordinary unhappiness, which
is worth having even if there are psychological and social costs involved. Al
though the price may be high at times, perhaps the non-Oedipalised prefer intermittent creative ecstasy even if the price is sometimes about hysterical
misery. Deleuze may be a case in point here, as a man of gifted intellect who
battled with a serious drink problem most of his life, then ended up commit
ting suicide. However, some may prefer to run such risks, than settle for the
erotic wasteland that Marcuse describes (1956), comprised of a life of con
ventional social atrophy and the soulless toil of 'ordinary unhappiness'. This
preference to evade the demands of Oedipus, is understood as the source of all
individual and social psychopathology in classical psychoanalytic thinking. This may be because the evasion of Oedipal imperatives in a society that
rewards only conformity to them, will result in a degree of marginalisation, and/or scapegoating, with the potential outcome about of hysterical misery for
the individual(s) concerned. However this description of what happens when
Oedipus is evaded does not explain why this should necessarily be so.
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Jo Nash 315
I suggest, following Deleuze and Guattarri (1971,1980) that Oedipalisation is an effect of a cultural prohibition particular to a capitalist secular, bourgeois
society, and that the psychoanalytic 'cure' of accepting Oedipus only serves as
an adaption to this prohibition. What is prohibited in this cure is not incest, but ecstasy, or what Lacan would call 'jouissance' (Lacan, 1972), by which I
mean an experience of monadic 'unthought' (or rather unsymbolised) unity, of
bliss, wherein dualisms and boundaries between self and other, mind and
body, thought and feeling dissolve. Such ecstasy may be defined as pre
Oedipal in psychoanalytic in that it recalls that 'oceanic state' (Freud) psy
choanalysts believe was experienced at the mother's breast, before entry into
language. I prefer to call it trans-Oedipal, to convey the sense of having moved
beyond the demands of Oedipus, beyond triangulation, beyond the confines of
language once we have been fully interpolated into the linguistic symbolic order. Trans-Oedipal bliss, I suggest is a function of a subjectivity that has
exorcised the desires associated with Oedipus, has become deterritori?lised,
de-oedipalised, and instead becomes a nomadic assemblage of singularities that does not invest desire in an object as such, but in a life, here and now, in
pure immanence (Deleuze, 1995).
We will say of pure immanence that it is A LIFE, and nothing else. It is not immanence to life, but the immanent that is in nothing is itself a life. A life is the
immanence of immanence, absolute immanence: it is complete power, complete
bliss.[...] no longer dependent on a Being or submitted to an Act?it is an absolute immediate consciousness whose very activity no longer refers to a being but is
ceaselessly posed in a life [...] Small children, through all their sufferings and
weaknesses, are infused with an immanent Ufe that is pure power and even bliss. The indefinite aspects in a life lose all ind?termination to the degree that they fill out a plane of immanence or [...]to the degree that they constitute elements of a
transcendental field (Deleuze, 1995: 27-30). emphasis in original
The bliss of pure immanence is a consequence of a commitment to the
present moment, which can only be lived by embracing continuous change from a place of paradoxical stillness, the opening at the core of subjectivity comprised of a transversal desire (Buchanan, 2000) that can sustain the connective flow of what Deleuze and Guattarri termed nomadic intensities, confluences and plateaus (1972, 1983). In short, trans-Oedipal subjectivity collapses the false hierarchies and dualisms of paternal Law and relates fra
ternally, along rhizomatic lines of flight that exist on a plane of immanence, once Oedipal subjectivity has been 'tried on for size', negotiated more or less
successfully, and overcome.
The trans-Oedipal subject can evade pathology even on the social margins, as they remain aware that the Oedipal subject is in the majority, but instead 'surf the Oedipal trajectories that compel a particular mode of social organi sation, that instil a strong sense of hierarchical functioning in it's social
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
316 Journal of Religion and Health
subjects. This hierarchical functioning reproduces a form of social production that meets the needs of the dominant class under capitalism, and so the trans
Oedipal subject threatens the continued reproduction of the capitalist system
through the enactment of revolutionary desires. As Buchanan writes the
'...reactionary mode invests desire in conformance with the interests of a domi
nant class.... revolutionary invests desire in...a transversal manner... to cut
across barriers of race, class and gender.' (Buchanan, 2000: 29)
The Oedipalised subject can attain bliss too of course, by experiencing sex
ual orgasm with one other person, albeit briefly, before that connective flow is
broken, and one is returned to the ordinary unhappiness of which Freud
writes. Or ecstasy can be attained trans-Oedipally, through a range of crea
tive, mystical and ascetic practices. These practices, including fasting, aim to
subvert the dualistic splits necessitated by a psychic economy of triangulated alienation, characteristic of Oedipalisation, industrial capitalism, and their
concomitant Cartesian and Newtonian view of the cosmos. As Deleuze writes, to remedy the alienation and false dualisms inherent in such a world view,
'The collective problem then, is to institute, find, or recover a maximum of con
nections. For connections (and disjunctions) are nothing other than the PHYSICS OF RELATIONS, THE COSMOS (Deleuze, 1993: 52)' emphasis in original.
In short, if people were able to attune to another, more ecological view of
reality, to connect with their radical (root) relationality (Brennan, 1992) with
the entire (human, organic and inorganic) environment, then the political economy and cultural ethic of competitive consumption upon which capitalism thrives (which is the only means we have of attaining a sensual form of ecstasy in secular society), would fall. I call this facility for connectedness a 'spiritual
modality' of being as pure immanence, invested with a trans-Oedipal Eros
which extends beyond the purely human matrix of objects, and partakes instead of what Deleuze calls the univocity of desire. Trans-Oedipal Eros
partakes of, yet supercedes, the purely human matrix of object relations
common to what Deleuze and Guattarri call the 'holy family', and inaugurs the
BwO as a nomadic, affective assemblage. Trans-Oedipal Eros corrupts bour
geois Oedipal limits, requisite ontological boundaries, and the compartmen taUsation of desire necessary to fuel the consumption ethic. It deterritorialises
desire from the matrix of consumption, so it instead becomes a lived reality of
relational connectivity, of continuous nomadic and rhizomatic becomings, of
territorialisations and deterritorialisations.
However, it is the cultural phenomena that defy the cultural imperatives of
Oedipus, such as those highlighted in this paper, that are probably best
explored by a social theory that also aims to actively subvert the omnipresent necrosis (causing an omnipresent neurosis?) of familial triangulation. Deleuze
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Jo Nash 317
and Guattarri show us how a spiritual theory of origin and development has
been replaced by a sexual one in the form of Oedipus. I suggest that, with what
Marcuse (1956) calls the sexual 'de-repression' of secular consumer society
(with its promise of sensual ecstasy on demand continuously represented), a
retaliatory social repression of the spiritual, the sacred and the numinous are
inaugurated. This repressed spirituality nevertheless returns, in a range of
'perverse' forms, just like sex did in the underground culture of promiscuity,
adultery, disease and prostitution prevalent in the sexually repressive culture
of Victorian England. Interestingly it is this culture of sexual repression which
gave rise to psychoanalysis...to what Deleuze and Guattarri call the omni
present 'double bind' of Oedipus, just as the current age has given rise to the
secular new-age double bind, which renounces God and yet promotes the
purchase and consumption of a range of mind-body (boggling?) spiritual
therapies at one and the same time. These new age practices are what I call
mutant spiritualities (rather than perverse sexualities), though most of the
consumers of such produce have no clear conception of what their soul is, and
are not interested in whether or not God exists.
Is the double bind sustained in the life of the godless spiritual junkie an
indication of a hopeless enterprise? How can one nurture the soul or spirit in a
godless universe? Deleuze and Guattarri think that it is the inherent con
tradiction in this double bind that forestalls foreclosure, and so releases the
'desiring-production' born of creative disjuncture, which can in turn only be
understood via the non-reductive exploration they term schizoanalysis. In a
sense schizoanalysis is a total subversion of the Newtonian, dualistic ten
dencies of psychoanalysis. In the schizoanalytic schema, which is located in a
quantum universe, the cosmic fabric is not comprised of discrete objects in
space, but of a continuum of matter comprised of plateaus of intensities, of
energy, with both solid and the apparent space between objects composed of
light and dark matter. This contrasts markedly with the Newtonian, psy
choanalytic universe of ontologically boundaried objects, cathected by the
human mind as either present or absent. In the schizoanalytic quantum
universe, all is both present and absent, in continuous nomadic shifts of ter
ritorialisation and deterritorilisation, with what are termed 'lines of flight'
tracing the nomadology of this desiring production on a plane of immanence.
The subversion of the old dualist binary polarities revealed by recent cos
mology also lends itself to new ways of thinking about bodies, subjectivity and
culture. This is what Deleuze and Guattarri have taken on board in their anti
Oedipal, rhizomatic philosophy of intersubjective, 'desiring production' as the
source and destination of living, that is living as a life of pure immanence.
I suggest that the spiritually repressed, (by which I mean that aspect of our
being that is able to experience this plane of immanence) has returned in a
number of practices judged to be more or less 'perverse' by the secular and/or
orthodox religious majority looking on from the outside. In this case, regulated acts of spiritually motivated fasting, commonplace in religious societies, has
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
318 Journal of Religion and Health
mutated into a food practice which I wish to argue remains associated with the
cultivation of ecstasy understood as 'self-transcendence, as pure immanence, that enables the physical body to become the BwO. The secularised practice of
fasting has been reconstructed as a dangerous pathology at one extreme or
eccentric health fad at the other, and includes anorexia, fad dieting, health
fasts, detoxifying cleanses and purges, and cultivated 'inedia', such as that
undertaken by the new age breatharian movement, in order that they attain a
godlike self-sufficiency. I suggest that this is because despite the widespread secularisation of culture, the age-old human desire for an experience of uni
fication, of ecstasy, and the obUteration of our existential dualities and the
sense of alienation which block this, persists and will be pursued, however
perversely (Johnson, 1987).
From religious fasting to Pro-Anorexia (Pro Ana): Inedia and the BwO
In her historical study of fasting common to religious women of the Middle
Ages, Caroline Walker-Bynum (1987) traces the lineage between the food
practices of religiously motivated fasting and contemporary anorexia.
The early 1980's saw a flurry of interest both in the popular press and among doctors in so-called female eating disorders - without the least awareness of the
reUgious context in which, until very recently, similar behaviours occurred'
(1987: 75)
She remarks on the absence of knowledge of the historical continuum in
the contemporary clinical professions involved in the treatment of anorexia, and proposes that making these links may provide new insights into the
phenomenon. The food practices of reUgious women of medieval Europe were a very serious concern of Catholic theologians at that time. The
religious significance of food for women appears in fact to be a cross-cul
tural, transhistorical phenomenon. She remarks that in the late nineteenth
and early 20th centuries there were a number of medical doctors and
CathoUc theologians who were very interested in the ability of certain
women to live without eating, stimulated in part by the case of Teresa
Neumann (d 1962) (now claimed as an inspiration to the breatharian
movement). Teams of theologians and clinicians wished to ascertain whe
ther an ability to Uve without food, or on the eucharist alone, could be a
result of supernatural powers, a medical condition, or a special grace.
Walker Bynum also remarks that Catholic theologians were deeply dis
turbed by other behaviours of these 'fasting girls', and so wished to find
that there was no such connection. These girls and women often spoke out
against the hypocrisy of the church and of holy men, in the name of the
holy spirit, and were able to discern consecrated from unconsecrated bread
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Jo Nash 319
offered them during the eucharist. Unsurprisingly, the 'holy men' in charge of proceedings wished to find that these abilities were influenced by the
devil, or madness or both, rather than God. She writes;
Just as doctors and psychiatrists tend to treat fasting under such rubrics as fear of mutilation, rejection of the mother, and battle for control?forgetting that
whatever else it is, it is a food practice ?so theologians and historians have failed to notice that food miracles, eucharistie piety, and abstinence are all food prac tices. Once one notices that eating and not eating are central themes in medieval
European culture, as in many cultures, much of the long available evidence on
spirituality appears in new patterns, and new evidence begins to emerge
(1987: 75).
Recent research on the 'pro-ana' movement, (Ward, 2004) a cyber-culture of
anorexics who aim to normalise anorexia as a 'lifestyle option', rather than a
medical condition, reveals how spiritual metaphors inform their activities and are used to explain the phenomenon of 'pro-ana' anorexia. The pro-ana phi
losophy is explained as follows by the authors of web pages on one site,
Volitional, proactive anorexia is not a disease or a disorder. It is not to be con fused with EO-anorexia; it is not something invasive which one "suffers from." There are no VICTIMS here. It is a lifestyle choice that begins and ends with a
particular faculty human beings seem in drastically short supply of today: the will. (2004: http://www.plagueangel.net/grotto/idl.html)
We are also promised a forthcoming extension of the pro-ana manifesto entitled: 'Pro-Ana as Spiritual Path and Discipline: Change in Conformity
with Will' (2004: http://www.plagueangel.net/grotto/idl.html) The above quote emphasising the will certainly has a Nietzschean flavour to
it. In her paper, Ward describes how famous 'waif celebrities such as Kate Moss and Clarista Flockhart are held up as 'thinspiration' by the pro-ana movement. Also, the images of celebrities posted on the site bear comparison to the ethereal, otherworldly creatures of angels and fairies depicted in 'pro ana art'. These icons are cherished as examples of the perfection, purity and control coveted by the pro-ana movement. The icons of thinspiration demon strate their superhuman status by exercising a quasi- divine control over their
bodies, through a range of diet fads, extreme exercise, fasts, cleanses, etc. I
suggest that these people are employing secularised versions of ancient ascetic
practices involving strenuous control of fleshy desires, which similarly evoked the admiration of the followers of saints, mystics, and visionaries, and led to them being conferred with divine status for their ability to exercise extreme levels of control over 'lower' animal appetites.
When we dare to regard the food practice of fasting non-pathologically, outside the bio-medical model (Ward), then I suggest we can see a common
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
320 Journal of Religion and Health
motivation connecting them. Each involves the human subject in the inten
tional transformation of desires, and we can trace an historical shift in the
conception of these desires and their source motivation, from the religious
concept of inspiration, or a 'divine source' of desire for change, towards a sense
that such changes are reaUy a matter of individual will, or a 'will to power', in
a Nietzchean sense, modelled by icons of thinspiration. I would like to propose that Deleuze and Guattarri's ontological plane of immanence, or 'transcen
dental unconscious' is a useful concept for explaining the volitional transfer of
these transcultural, transhistorial food practices, between religious and sec
ular societies, to re-emerge in a mutant form. The notion of the transcendental
unconscious explains why certain human desires, for example to cultivate a
sense of a body that supercedes flesh, a 'body without organs', do not die out
with secularisation, but rather 'mutate' on the plane of immanence as a result
of rhizomatic relational shifts in the intensities and flows of desire. An ancient
spiritual practice continues but becomes radically re-contextualised on the
plane of immanence, as a consequence of new relational confluences with new
technologies, generating mutant categories of something ancient but long
forgotten. In a secular context the fasting body has an 'uncanny' presence, as
something old and long familiar (Freud, 1919)) re- connects with us in new
ways to transform the expression of 'de-repressed' (Marcuse, 1956) desires.
From Pro-Ana to living on light: mutant spiritualities and the hunger
for pure immanence.
'Like a plant, surely the body can be trained to exist on nothing, to take it's nourishment from the air.
When you coast without eating for a significant period of time, and you are still
alive, you begin to scoff at those fools who believe they must eat to live. It is
blatantly obvious to you that this is not true.
Food hinders your progress.' (2004: http://www.plagueangef.net/grotto/id7.html)
The above quote was again taken form the pro-ana website, as an inspirational affirmation used to help sustain the practice. This expression of a desire to live
on air alone has also been actively cultivated as a food practice by the
breatharian movement, but not as a reclaimed eating disorder, rather as a
reordered food practice, of health benefit to adherents. This inedia is a
mutation of an ancient Eastern food practice developed by yogis, who profess to defy ageing and live on 'prana' or light', (loosely translated) rather than
sustaining the body through the ingestion of food and liquid (Jasmuheen,
1998). The belief is that human beings can indeed live on light and air just like
plants, if they transform their 'addiction' to food and eating through the
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Jo Nash 321
voluntary undertaking of a twenty-one day attunement process. The self
styled guru of this movement, Jasmuheen, has an internet base for her
business, called the CIA, or the Cosmic Internet Academy. Through her site
she offers a programme of activities, a manifesto for living, that she recom
mends can help an individual achieve self-mastery. She also markets her
seminars and books through the internet too. She writes,
One of the greatest gifts that you can give yourself is complete mastery over the molecular structure and all of your energy fields. Mastery is about being empowered to exist in a state of pure health, constant regeneration, and freedom from disease on all levels of our being. (Jasmuheen, 2004: http://www.selfem powermentacademy.com.au/lifestyle2.htm)
A brief tour of the internet sites that are registered when you type 'breatharian' into any search engine demonstrate how very controversial this
food practice is. The sceptics claim that these new age gurus are conning the
public, and yet we have a long standing tradition, in human cultures of all
kinds, of a desire to live without food, or with less food temporarily. The
breatharians claim that yogis and other Eastern ascetics prove this is possible. Some also claim to be extraterrestrial beings, and weave vast systems of
thought and belief around this, that it appears to this writer, only the most
credulous would swallow (Brookes, 2005). This unearthly origin they claim
bestows them with telepathic abilities, which they also compare with the
mental state of the schizophrenic (Jasmuheen, 2004). The diagnosis of
schizophrenia is often bestowed on those with openings in their auric field that
attract parasitic energies, they claim. The cure for this condition is deliverance
through auric re-programming, say the breatharians.
Interestingly, this resonates with the Deleuzian attraction to the schizo
phrenic experience as revelatory of our real relationship to the ontological continuum, through territorialisation, deterritorialisation and reterritoriali
sation, between assemblages of desiring-production on the plane of imma nence. The hallucinated schizophrenic is the creator of her own world, she is
pivotal to her experience which is a product of her desires. This may be a
terrifying or an ecstatic experience, but whatever it is it is a pure production of the desires, freed from the dungeon of repression by the transcendental un
conscious. I suggest that the food practice of intentional fasting is also an act of
desiring production but a conscious act of the will, rather than an unleashed
transcendental unconscious.
Perhaps the new age market of mind-body-spirit therapies, including the
breatharians, are capitalising on the deep hunger many have in the secular
ised West for a lost sense of unity, what is often called 'transcendence', but which is about achieving a sense of expanded state of embodiment, a BwO fuelled by a transversal desire to extend experience of 'self beyond the
boundaries of skin and flesh. I contend that an exploration of the textual
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
322 Journal of Religion and Health
content of the cyber communities referred to in this paper reveal the cultural
inscription of hunger for a lost experience of ecstasy, of bliss (Johnson, 1987) that has left a vacuum in the Western psyche, which these mutant spiritu alities hope to fill. The shared exchanges on these sites have a common nar
rative content describing how the food practice of fasting evokes a sense of
overcoming the mind-body dualities characteristic of our existential state, and
in classical psychoanalytic terms an evasion of the castration of ontological
separateness from our source of nourishment, amounts almost to an evasion of
weaning. As such the ambition to live on light' may be viewed as an anal and
narcissistic, regressive in nature and evading the existential reality of dif
ference, of otherness from a psychoanalytic Oedipal perspective. Are the
breatharians unconsciously regressing to an early nutritive state, rather akin
to the way an embryo or foetus attains nourishment in the womb at the same
time as promoting this as evidence of divine self-sufficiency? Interestingly the
breatharians are closely aligned to the rebirthing movement (Orr, 1977), with
its emphasis on regression through breathwork to attain catharsis and ener
getic cleansing. Both movements however would profess to be moving beyond the physical realm associated primarily with early life, into a post-corporeal, self sustaining, spiritual state. Both actively aim to cultivate an increased
capacity for self generated ecstasy, which signals a breakthrough into this
post-corporeal realm, followed by an inner peace resulting from a release of
archaically embodied toxins and/or stress.
Jasmuheen sells a 21 day programme through her website that, she alleges achieves a foolproof evasion of separation from this primal nutritive state, and
there is a market for it. The 21 day programme is sold by extolling the virtues
of the absence of bowel movements, the absence of a need to attend to inges tion, digestion, and elimination, which is akin to a womb like state also. The
anality of such desires for purity, sense of extreme control, and evasion of
processing matter through digestion are all too obvious to those of us with a
psychoanalytic perspective. However, once you've paid the 2000 dollars it costs
for the 21 day programme just think of all the money you'll save on food (the web site cheerfully reminds purchasers)! This practice is also sold as a cure for
world hunger, as a selfless enterprise and ultimately altruistic.
The less extreme end of this continuum from eating to no eating, includes
dieting and fasting for health reasons. Often the outcomes of fasting for health
reasons include increased energy, weight loss and sense of purification. The
desire is to transform the heaviness of the flesh, to become lighter, in a
manner akin to the fasting mystics of the main religious traditions. Those in
the pro-ana movement echo such longings for a crepuscular existence, some
where between earthly embodiment and death.
As one pro-ana writer says in a caption added to an image depicting an
angelic, fairy-like creature,
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Jo Nash 323
Infinity is so damn sweet your mortal earth cannot compete...starving for the
other shore, I will not eat' (2004: http://www.plaQueanQel.netlQrotto/idl4.html)
It appears that for some, fasting is a practice expressive of secularised desire
to experience an expanded state of consciousness, that is then reconstructed as
either pathological or therapeutic, depending on the socio-cultural context and
who is involved in constructing the meaning of the practice. There is clearly a
common desire in all three practices to expand and extend the limits of the
body, whether it be through adherence to fasting supported by meditational
practice and prayer, or by the force of will power alone. This paper suggests that in an age characterised by the spread of materialistic secularisation, the chuman desire for a sense of integrated unity with what is
' beyond' the
experience of the physical plane, rather than the duality common to the
experience of mind and body as distinct, has become rationalised, recontex
tualised and expressed in other ways than explicitly 'spiritually'. I propose that superseding the body with organs, which Deleuze and Guattarri cha
racterise as a medicalised, dualistic entity, to become a 'body without organs', that is a unified energetic intensity, is driven by the fundamental desire of the
human organism for ecstasy and bUss.
Theoretical discussion and conclusion
In a secularised society, this desire and need to overcome the limits of the flesh
has become transformed into other practices that seek to satisfy this desire, in
order to become a more expanded kind of body, a body that includes a physical awareness of areas of consciousness, or exterior, collective (Jung) mind, that
used to be available to many through communal, religious and/or spiritual
practices. The only social theory that attempts to provide a language for
thinking about the states of consciousness achieved by this process of
expansion, is the work of Deleuze and Guattarri, found in Anti-Oedipus and A
Thousand Plateaus. This, perhaps to Newtonian minds, is paradoxically materialist in its ontology, but a materialism admitting of a different order of
reality, a quantum cosmology. In this schema, the body inhabits the 'mind', where the mind is conceptualised as an affective assemblage of desires tra
versing the plane of pure immanence. Body does not exist in opposition to
mind, and mind is not reducible to the brain. Mind is an energetic plateau of
consciousness, experienced via affect, as an intensity of desiring thought and
thinking. Bion's (1967) clinical observations of the affective registration of the
minutae of transference phenomena, of 'thoughts in search of a thinker'
(Bion's 'thinking' comprises of intuitive apprehensions, not mere cogitations) appear theoretically consistent with this Deleuzian enterprise. The common
foundations of both sch?mas are cosmological, as Bion too was aiming to
import quantum cosmology into psychoanalysis, and develop a concomitant
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
324 Journal of Religion and Health
theory of embodied mind, experienced affectively, then processed cognitively through the symbolism of linguistic naming and containing. When language fails us said Bion, psychosis may set in. The purpose of psychoanalytic dis course is to provide a language for the subtle registrations of affective expe rience that would otherwise remain unsymbolised and uncontained. Having a
language as a container for affective experiences may help prevent disinte
gration, psychosis and regression, because symbolisation through language enables conscious thinking to take place. I propose that Deleuze and Guattarri
provide us with a language for conceptualising how the psychological pro cesses Bion attends to, called the 'unthought known' by Bollas (1987), operate in the wider social and cultural sphere, in terms of a 'political physics' of social
relations (Protevi, 2001). Deleuze and Guattarri use Newtonian psychoanalysis against itself, to
subvert the ontological dualities and hierarchical medical model underpinning the polarised classification of existential states into pathological or healthy.
Hence their subversion of a psychoanalysis based as it is upon an unconscious
deploying repression as the guiding principle of civilisation, becomes instead
schizoanalysis that deploys the unconscious as a 'factory', generating desiring
production. Hence the famous quote from Anti-Oedipus 'A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the
analyst's couch. A breath of fresh air, a relationship with the outside world.'
(Deleuze & Guattari, 1971: 2) Classical psychoanalysis with its unconscious as the inaugurator of
repression tends always to a reductionist pathologising of any and all differ ence from what is regarded as, 'Oedipally', that is socially 'normal' within the
social formation of Western capitalism. For psychoanalysts the evasion of
Oedipalisation, and the concomitant evasion of its actualisation in the 'holy
family', indicates developmental failure and emotional arrest. Yet many of the most creative people in Western societies do just that. Family life may not be
conducive to creative production of anything other than children, unless there is a bifurcation of roles, that enables one or other partner to evade most
childcare, or parents are able to pay staff to perform this function. It is difficult to imagine how a woman breastfeeding her infant might write a book, create a
sculpture or compose music.
Schizoanalytic language enables us to conceptualise various processes
engaged in what is 'other' to familial desiring production, in non-pathologis
ing, and cosmologically materialist terms. This language draws upon a sub
verted psychoanalytic quantum cosmology of interrelationality, that admits of no 'essence' or impenetrable boundary between what appear to us as discrete
objects. Rather we live in a universe of energetic assemblages, of rhizomati
cally organised, nomadically transitional desires. All exists on an energetic continuum of affects comprising confluences and flows of intensities of desire, interconnected through the plane of immanence, which is an omnipresent
trajectory that participates in and transforms what is', from inorganic brute
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Jo Nash 325
matter to the most highly complex organism. In this way, a human being and a
stone are very much related, and their existence connected through the
machinic couplings of their particular assemblages, through the flows and
intensities that converge in plateaus on the plane of immanence. Freud called
these flows 'cathexes', that is the investment of unconscious desire in our
environment that enables us to construct meaning, and prioritise our relations
to objects in terms of their ontological significance. Much of the conceptual schema adopted by Deleuze and Guattarri is psychoanalytic in origin, but
involves a profound subversion of the discursive dualities of reductive
pathology employed by psychoanalysts. It delivers us from the categorisations of the psychoanalytic mind that enable it to exercise an illusory rationalising
omnipotence, a sense of being in control of what is irrational through the
activity of naming. Deleuze and Guattarri also developed a discourse for
naming the irrational, but decline any need for control through symbolisation.
They celebrate the irrationality and radical uncertainty of the universe as the source of creativity as desiring production, whether it be expressed in science,
poetry, music or love.
It is my contention that the Deleuzian model of social relations grounded in a materialist political physics (Protevi) of affect and desire can contribute to an
understanding of how the practice of rigorous fasting, enables one to achieve an altered state of consciousness that permits an experience of this plane of
immanence. The food practice of inedia; whether aligned to religion, pro anorexia 'thinspiration', or breatharians living on light', enables practitioners to achieve an altered state of consciousness that permits a collapsing of the dualistic affective divisions between subject and object, within and beyond, to
enable an experience of transversal, trans-Oedipal desire to enjoy both, at one
and the same time. This experience overcomes the alienation characterising the everyday existence of human beings subject to the psycho-social and
political dictates of modern industrial society. It is an experience of the col
lapsing of the inner and outer world's, common to those suffering from psy
chosis, but also to the mystical imagination that underpins much creative
work, as Deleuze and Guattarri propose. Fasting can enable this process, can
be ecstatic practitioners claim. In schizoanalytic terms it can reconnect us to that Oedipally prohibited bliss we crave, enable us to move beyond the cor
poreal 'self, to 'transcend' the body with organs to become a BwO on the plane of immanence.
Fasting to attain a conscious connective flow within the plane of immanence
then, is in some ways, a subversive activity. It enables practitioners to attain an existential state of consciousness beyond the conventional dualist divisions
manipulated and driven by the objectifying forces of consumerist capitalism. Binary divisions of inner and outer, self and other, mind and body, thought and feeling, are overcome, through a conscious decision to resist the desire to consume. This enables practitioners to resist being invaded and colonised by a
dominant cultural ethic of consumption, and subjected to these dualistic forces
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
326 Journal of Religion and Health
of fragmentation, of disintegration. In this way voluntary inedias, whether
regarded as pathological or healthy, may be a modal expression of the 'body without organs'. The BwO resists the consumerist cultural imperative to
ingest from the outside, then project out from the inside, in order to construct
meaning, to define itself, with no substantive desire of its own to intervene.
The BwO challenges a culture that reproduces repression of a desire for
ecstasy, undermines creativity, and stifles imagination. However to all this there is a paradox: these secular fasting practices resist
the colonisation by the consumption ethic, but at the same time 'buy into' a set
of desirable images re: the body beautiful, the healthy body. Perhaps the thin
body is celebrated because it is an image of power and control, of an inspired will to power, in a culture saturated with stimuli to overeat. Perhaps that is
why wilfully thin people attain a god-like status, in a secular, consumerist
society. They are an embodied reality of the self-sufficient, narcissistic indi
vidualism characteristically desired as the highest good by Western societies.
This is achieved not by consuming food, but by consuming diets, health
cleanses, purges, alternative therapies, exercise programmes, and the cultural
produce of 'thinspired' fitness gurus. Much of these food practices are con
nected to new age mind-body-spirit practices that endow them with a mutated
spiritual meaning. New agers transform their desires by shopping for prac tices that enable them to cultivate other ones. While a preoccupation with
limiting food intake means some consumption patterns are transformed, the
purchase of fasting regimes, diets, purges, new age books, seminars and
micronutrients means the consumption ethic of western societies remains
intact. It is difficult to see what is in any way 'spiritual', or even 'alternative'
about that.
References
Bion, W. R. (1967). Second thoughts. London: Karnac.
Bion, W. R. (1970). Attention and interpretation. London: Karnac.
Bollas, C. (1987). The shadow of the object: psychoanalysis of the unthought known. NY: Columbia
Press.
Brennan, T. (1992). The interpretation of the flesh: freud and femininity. London: Routledge.
Brookes, W. (2005). The Breatharian Institute of America [www. document] http://www.breath arian.com/ (accessed February 2005).
Buchanan, I. (2000). Deleuzism. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
Deleuze, G. (1993). Essays critical and clinical. Trans. Smith and Greco Minnessotta: University of Minnessotta Press, 1997.
Deleuze, G. (1995). Pure immanence: Essays on a life. Trans. A. Boyman Zone Books, New York
2001.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1971). Anti-Oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia. London, 1984:
Athlone Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1980). A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia Trans.
Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.
Freud, S. (1915-17). Lecture twenty one. In Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis S. E. 15-16,
ed. and trans James and Alix Strachey, London: Hogarth Press 1955.
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Jo Nash 327
Freud, S. (1919). The Uncanny in S.E. 17 pp.217-252, ed. and trans. James and Alix Strachey London: Hogarth Press 1955.
Fromm, E. (1942). The fear of freedom. London: Kegan Paul and Co.
Fromm, E. (1962). Beyond the chains of illusion: my encounter with Marx and Freud. New York:
Simon and Schuster.
Jasmuheen, (1998). Living on light. Burgrain Germany: Koha Publishing.
Jasmuheen, (2004). Lifestyles to life purpose [www. document] http://www.selfempowermentaca
demy.com.au/hfestyle2.htm (accessed January 2005).
Johnson, R. J. (1987). Ecstasy: understanding the psychology of joy. San Francisco: Harper San
Francisco.
Kirkby, V. (1997). Telling flesh: the substance of the corporeal. New York and London: Routledge.
Kroker, A. and Cook, D. (1986). The post modern scene: excremental culture & hyper-aesthetics. London: Macmillan.
Lacan, J. (1972). The seminar, book XX, ENCORE, on feminine sexuality: the limits of love and
knowledge. Trans. Bruce Fink. Norton, London 1998.
Malony, H. N. (1983). Wholeness and holiness: readings in the psychology I theology of mental
health. Baker Book House, Grand Rapids: Michigan.
Marcuse, H. (1956). Eros and Civilisation a philosophical enquiry into freud. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Marcuse, H. (1972). One dimensional man. London: Abacus.
Nash, J. (2000). The thinking body: a feminist revision of the work of melanie klein, [www.
document] http://human-nature.com/free-associations/Nashcontents.htm.
Orr, L. (1977). Rebirthing for the new age. NY: Celestial Publishing.
Protevi, J. (2001). Political physics. London: Athlone Press.
Rahn, C. (1928). Science and the religious life: a psycho-physiological approach. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Symington, N. (1998). Emotion and spirit: questioning the claims of psychoanalysis and religion. London: Karnac.
Symington, N. (1993). Narcissism: a new theory. London: Karnac.
Thompson, K., (2004). Exacting beauty: theory, assessment, and treatment of body image distur
bance. Washington: APA Books: American Psychological Association.
Walker-Bynum, C. (1987). Holy feast and holy fast: the religious significance of food to medieval
women. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ward, K. (2004). Nothing tastes as good as thin feels: the pro-ana underground as an "anti
medical" model of anorexia. Unpublished ScHARR research paper, commissioned by ESRC.
Wulff, D. (1997). Psychology of religion; classic and contemporary. New York: John Wiley and
Sons.
This content downloaded from 157.138.1.34 on Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:45:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions