engCalvo-Pascual, M.Eating disorders and constitutive absence in contemporary women's writingART-2017-101747Anorexic narratives share the thesis that compulsive behaviours like eating disorders are determined by a strong existential component fuelled by women''s paradoxical position in present day capitalist western culture. After a review of social and psychological factors that play a significant role in the development of the disorders, this essay explores the representation of anorexia nervosa in three different first-person narratives. By portraying the psychological intricacies of the illness, these texts provide valuable information regarding its aetiology and cure in the line of recent bio-medical research on eating disorders that stresses the need to treat the disease as a symptom of a deeper emotional distress. In short, patients and characters manage to overcome the illness when they acknowledge a sense of constitutive absence as the root of their disease and learn to live with the ensuing need for identity definition.2017http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/63052http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/63052oai:zaguan.unizar.es:63052info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/H05info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MINECO/FFI2015-63506-PJournal of International Women's Studies 18, 4 (2017), 292-305by-nc-ndhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess