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No prodigioso jejum, às vezes até a morte, mulheres ocidentais expressaram uma relação específica com a comida durante quase oito séculos. Este ensaio tenta explicar esse comportamento entretecendo os finos e fascinantes dados históricos apresentados nos três livros resenhados – Holy Anorexia (BELL, 1985); Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease (BRUMBERG, 1988) e Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (BYNUM, 1987) – vendo-os a partir de perspectivas interculturais e totalizantes fundamentais para a antropologia. Pretendo mostrar que o jejum de mulheres ocidentais difere radicalmente de outros tipos de jejum observados por antropólogos ao redor do globo e que envolve uma alteração altamente simbólica da relação universal das mulheres com a comida. Argumento que ela pode ser mais bem compreendida como um comportamento pluri-determinado, uma combinação de fatores ideológicos, econômicos, políticos e sociais.
Abstract
In prodigious fasting, sometimes to death, Western women have expressed an extraordinary relationship to food for almost eight centuries. This essay attempts to explain such behavior by weaving together the fine-grained and fascinating historical data presented in the three books under review – Holy Anorexia (BELL, 1985); Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease (BRUMBERG, 1988) e Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (BYNUM, 1987) – and viewing them from the cross-cultural and holistic perspectives fundamental to anthropology. I aim to show that Western female fasting differs radically from other kinds of fasting observed by anthropologists across the globe and that it involves a highly symbolic alteration of women’s universal relationship to food. I argue that it is best understood as a multidetermined behavior, an interplay of ideological, economic, political, and social factors.
Key Words: Fasting, Anthropology, Women, Food.
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