Reviews for On the edge

The average rating for On the edge based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-01-21 00:00:00 Steven Hines 1.5 stars. Liked parts of the section on The Waves, specifically the analyses of Rhoda, Susan, and Jinny, but heavily disliked the opening chapter on anorexia, which fell into the classic trap of using flowery language to describe eating disorders, to the point of their romanticization. I particularly disliked the following section: "While I would wish neither to deny the potential dangers of self-starvation nor to suggest that it is a course of action that feminists should either adopt or promulgate, anorexia can, at its most positive, function as a bell-jar in which personal and political change is fermented on the profoundest level. Failing that, it can still serve women by providing a set of stop-gap boundaries against social, sexual, ideological, and other incursions. Such boundaries are, of course, no substitute for an authentic sense of coalescent and unbreachable selfhood, but they are an effective emergency measure, without which the alternative would seem to be disintegration." I read this paragraph several times, as it is rather abstract. I believe Glenny is pointing, to a certain extent, to the ways anorexia can emerge as a coping mechanism in part in survivors of sexual assault ("it can still serve women by providing a set of stop-gap boundaries against social, sexual, ideological, and other incursions"). However, it seems like she is arguing that, in such a situation, anorexia is a temporary substitute for a sense of self, as well as a "bell-jar" within which personal and political change is forged. While I see where she is coming from, I think it is incredibly dangerous, and quite reductive, to frame anorexia in this light: while anorexia is certainly political, as everything is, drawing a line between suffering from anorexia and taking a political stance may be giving eating disorders too much positive credit. Nor is anorexia an "emergency substitute" for a sense of selfhood: I would argue that any eating disorder is, itself, "disintegration." There was also a section in which Glenny critiques some of the ways in which inpatient units treat anorexia, writing, "When a woman refuses food she is speaking with her body because she is unable to speak in words; to force food upon her is thus not to 'help' her but to obliterate her message and mute her voice." While I understand Glenny is looking to criticize reductive forms of "treatment" that focus solely on food and physical consumption rather than the underlying reasons a person may be restricting, the way she did so, in my opinion, leans too far into romanticization. Certainly eating disorders often develop as the psychological turns physical; certainly eating disorders are often less about a desire to look a certain way, and more about something else that is lacking; certainly anorexia treatment needs to be much more nuanced than simply force-feeding patients. However, stating that forcing food upon a patient (while this type of treatment is problematic) is to "obliterate [one's] message and mute [one's] voice," in my opinion, veers too far into the dangerous territory of using flowery, romantic language to describe a mental health issue that is violent, life-threatening, and wholly unromantic. All of this is to say that, while I did find some of Glenny's analysis on Woolf's writing helpful and enlightening, as I read, I mostly felt wary. At the risk of lengthening this already-lengthy review, I would like to note that not all people who suffer from anorexia are women, that not all people who suffer from anorexia are thin, that not all people who suffer from anorexia are affected solely by patriarchy (this piece unfortunately glosses over the effects of European and/or white beauty standards on racial and ethnic minorities), and that anorexia is not the only eating disorder. As Leslie Jamison wrote, "Whenever I read accounts of the anorexic body as a semiotic system (as [Caroline] Knapp says, 'describing in flesh a pain I could not communicate in words') or an aesthetic creation ('the inner life … as a sculpture in bone'), I feel an old wariness. Not just at the familiarity of these metaphors—​bone as hieroglyph, clavicle as cry—​but at the way they risk performing the same valorization they claim to refute: ascribing eloquence to the starving body, a kind of lyric grace. I feel like I’ve heard it before: The author is still nostalgic for the belief that starving could render angst articulate. I used to write lyrically about my own eating disorder in this way, taking recourse in bone-​as-​language, documenting the gradual dumb show of my emergent parts—​knobs and spurs and ribs. But underneath this wariness—​must we stylize?—​I remember that starvation is pain, beyond and beneath any stylized expression." As I continue reading about Woolf and writings about the body, I may return to certain sections of this piece, but I will be taking everything with a grain of salt, as it were.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-12-15 00:00:00 Nicholas Fioretti Superb Marxist framed history of the USA in the first 3/4 of the 20th century, emphasising economics, politics and foreign policy. This is the outstanding Kolko at his best.