06.01 - SAUKKO - Paula - Studying The Self - From Subjective and Social To Personal and Political Dialogues

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Qualitative Research
2002; 2; 244 Qualitative Research
Paula Saukko
Studying the self: from the subjective and the social to personal and political dialogues
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ABS TRACT This article analyses and discusses the emotivist goal of
capturing the subjective self as well as the poststructuralist quest to
grasp the social self produced by discourses. It argues that both of
these positions are predicated on the classical notion of a subject
that knows the subjective self and its desires and/or its social rami-
fications. The downside of this understanding of the self is illustrated
by the way in which the experience, research and treatment of eat-
ing disorders are all driven by a similar elusive, gendered ideal of a
subject who knows itself and the world and how they both work.
This article argues for a more ambivalent or agonistically dialogic
way of approaching the self that acknowledges that the subjective is
always confounded by the social, and that the social can only be
grasped from a subjective point of view. This mode of studying the
self paves the way for a less judgemental and more conversational
way of relating to our selves, others and the social world, leading to
a more dialogic (inter)personal and political life.
KE YWORDS : dialogue, eating disorders, qualitative methodology,
subjectivity
The traditional social scientific approach to studying the self and its disorders,
such as eating disorders, is that these problems are real and that we should
come up with ways to cure them. The legitimation crisis in social inquiry
(Denzin and Lincoln, 2000) has led to questioning whether the self and its
proliferating troubles, from overeating and undereating to numerous addic-
tions, are real and whether science can understand or, much less, fix them.
In the study of the self, there have been two main responses to the legitima-
tion crisis. The first, subjectivist, emotivist response has aimed to resuscitate
the deep experience of the usually marginal and troubled self, such as a
ARTI CLE 244
Q
R
Studying the self: from the subjective
and the social to personal and political
dialogues
Qualitative Research
Copyright zooz
SAGE Publications
(London,
Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi)
vol. z(z): z-z6.
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PAUL A S AUKKO
University of Leicester
bulimic self (Kiesinger, 1998), which is understood to be silenced by main-
stream science and society. This desire is articulated both in emotivist
ethnography (e.g. Ellis and Flaherty, 1992; Ellis and Bochner, 1997, 2000) as
well as in the ubiquitous talk-show and therapeutic culture. The second, post-
structuralist response, on the contrary, views the self and its troubles with
scepticism. This sceptical position, prevalent both within academia as well as
in contemporary culture in general, argues that the infatuation with the self
and its disorders makes us preoccupied with being, for example, too fat or
having an eating disorder, only to submit us to oppressive social discourses
and their self-reformation programmes (Foucault, 1978).
1
Some research
positions navigate between the subjective and social positions outlined earlier,
arguing that individuals have some agency to understand and construct their
selves and their lives, while always being guided and constrained by social and
institutional discourses in these endeavours (e.g. Gubrium and Holstein,
1997; Holstein and Gubrium, 2000). However, while this line of inquiry
acknowledges the ambivalent nature of the self, which always partly knows
and partly does not know itself, this ambivalence gets lost in the traditional
way in which research is conducted, predicated on a notion of a known object
(the people being studied) and a knowing subject (the scholar, who examines
their subjective experience and its social ramifications).
The emotivist and poststructuralist approaches have provided fresh and
new ideas on how to study the self. However, even if they approach the self
from different directions, they both claim to capture it. Emotivism argues
that it captures the self from the personal inside, poststructuralism sets out to
look at it from the social outside or above, and the mixed view claims to do
both. This quest to capture the self from one position or another erases its
ambivalence. It does not do justice to the fact that we can never fully know the
subjective experience of our selves or others, as our understanding is always
infused with the social, which always partly operates behind our backs. Still,
we can never capture the social either, as the social is not accessible to us in its
totality, but only from a subjective point of view.
Drawing on Hannah Arendt (1958), this article argues for a more conver-
sational or agonistically dialogic mode of studying the self that acknowledges
its ambivalence. This mode of study envisions the relationship between the
scholar and the people being studied in dialogic terms of an encounter
between two selves that never quite understand one another or themselves.
Conceiving the research relationship in dialogic terms does away with the illu-
sion of being able to fully understand the subjective experience either from the
inside or the outside. Furthermore, an agonistically dialogic way of studying
the self examines the way in which the social infuses the intersubjective dia-
logue between the scholar and the people being studied, however not as some-
thing only the scholar is capable of deciphering, but more as a topic of critical
conversation. Finally, this mode of research helps to explore the social, not in
terms of a monolithic discourse, but as a conversation between different ways
Saukko: Studying the self 245
of experiencing the always social and subjective self and the way in which it
both separates and unites us.
Based on my research on women with eating disorders, I argue that an ago-
nistically dialogic mode of approaching the self helps us to imagine a less con-
frontational and more conversational (inter)personal and political life. The
experience, research and treatment of eating disorders are all driven by an
elusive, gendered ideal of a subject that knows the subjective self and its
desires or/and its social ramifications an ideal that is close to the emotivist
and poststructuralist methodological aims to know the self. An agonistically
dialogic mode of study imagines a less judgemental and more conversational
and ambivalent way of relating to our selves and others. Discussions on the
social nature of eating disorders, such as debates on feminism and beauty or
middle-class feminism, often end up deadlocked in disputes over what is the
true nature of the social or social oppression. Imagining a dialogic space
between our common social world and different subjective experiences of it
undoes the either/or logic of these feminist debates, paving the way for think-
ing in both/and terms of political alliances capable of negotiating between
unity and difference.
In what follows, I first discuss the subjectivist, objectivist and mixed modes
of studying the self. The second half of the article outlines an agonistically
dialogic way of studying the self, both conceptually and in practice, using my
research on women with eating disorders as an example.
Emotivist subjectivism
To begin discussing the various ways of studying the self, I start with emo-
tional subjectivism, which focuses on the intimate experience of the self.
Emotivism can be seen as one of the reactions to the legitimation crisis in that
it aims to fetch ways of recuperating the standpoints of subordinated selves,
such as addicts, and to allow them to speak for themselves and against
malestream scientific discourses, which have defined them. The works carried
out within this line of inquiry have provided powerful counterpoints to domi-
nant descriptions of the self and its problems, for instance, in the form of
(auto)biographic stories of women with eating disorders, including my own
(Saukko, 1996; Walstrom, 1996; Tillmann-Healy, 1997; Kiesinger, 1998). A
particular accomplishment of these self-narratives is that they break away
from the traditional form of studying eating disorders, which renders the
anorexic or bulimic woman as an object under a looking glass, whose symp-
toms and their underlying causes can be deciphered by the medical expert
or even a feminist cultural critic.
However, the quest to be truer to the lived reality of the self sometimes views
it as something genuine to be discovered under the debris of discourses. On
these occasions, this mode of research comes close to the sexual liberationist
discourse, which aimed to reveal a previously hidden or repressed sexuality,
Qualitative Research 2(2) 246
ending up increasing the (self-)monitoring of sexual mores, in the name of
authenticity and health (Foucault, 1978). Indeed, many scholars have
argued that experimental research, particularly the emotional (auto)ethno-
graphy variant (Ellis, 1991; Ellis and Bochner, 2000), often leads to the
talk-show dilemma of uncritically rehashing familiar tropes of personal
intrigue and bodily scandal as authentic experience (e.g. Clough, 1996,
2000; Atkinson and Silverman, 1997; Gubrium and Holstein, 1997; Forns,
2000). Sometimes these criticisms say more about the belligerency of inter-
paradigmatic warfare than the research in question. Yet, they also have a
truth to them.
To illustrate the possibilities and problems embedded in attempts to recu-
perate self-stories, I look at a piece focused on my own research topic, eating
disorders. Kiesingers (1998) evocative narrative aims to convey the visceral
and emotional reality of the painful and stigmatized life of Abbie, a 450-pound
bulimic woman. Abbie reminds Kiesinger of an old fat classmate, Gloria,
whom she used to tease, feeling guilty about it now. In an attempt to under-
stand what it means and feels like to be fat, Kiesinger cues on Abbies body:
How will I write about an obese life without having lived one? I look at Abbie
intently, focusing on the beads of sweat that form on her forehead. I look at her
eyes tiny blue splashes submerged in folds of skin above her cheeks. I note her
ankles and feet, pink and swollen. . . . I note her attire a lilac cotton frock with
pink trim around the neckline, soaked with perspiration. (p. 83)
Against fat acceptance movements agenda, Kiesingers description of
Abbies body is, quite obviously, politically incorrect. Yet, as Probyn (2000)
has noted, the problem with fat pride politics is that it pushes our revulsion
and disgust toward bodies deemed grotesque under a sanitized veneer of
acceptance (p. 128). Thus, the strength of Kiesingers story is that it brings
the powerful disgust and shame associated with fat bodies to the fore, force-
fully illustrating the visceral and pervasive feeling of shame that saturates
Abbies life (even if it is not clear whether the description of Abbies body cor-
responds with her sense of her self/body, as the depiction is narrated from
Kiesingers perspective).
Yet, the trouble with Kiesingers introspective description of the shameful-
ness and painfulness of Abbies body is that she holds on to it as real. This is
partly due to the way in which she relates to Abbie. Even if Kiesinger gen-
uinely aims to understand and identify with Abbie, she ends up feeling sorry
for her. As has been pointed out (e.g. Arendt, 1963: 856), feeling sorry or
pity claims an identification or sameness with the Other, yet ultimately posits
it as inferior to, and different from, the self (It must be horrible to be that fat!).
Thus, even if this mode of research makes us face different experiences, it
may end up doing it in a way that, rather than shatter our sense of our selves,
affirms the normality of our self/body and, consequently, the normal
self/body in general (this is what often happens in talk-shows, see Livingstone
and Lunt, 1994; Lowney and Holstein, 2001).
Emotional (auto)ethnography has been part of a tidal wave in social and
cultural research that has challenged positivist, objectivist modes of study
and writing, bringing to the agenda different worlds and different ways of
relating to the world. Yet, its quest to capture the experiencing self often
ignores the social discourses that interlace any experience of the self. Thus, it
ends up embracing a notion of a true subjective self, which may turn out not
that different from the positivist true self in that it may affirm those core
social mythologies, against which these works aim to provide a counterpoint
in the first place. Yet the question remains: How could one convey a very real
sense of shame and problematize this shame at the same time?
Poststructuralist objectivism
Poststructuralism negates the idea of resuscitating a silenced self, reminding
us that the way we experience our selves as, for example, being mentally dis-
ordered or even as having a life-story, is a product of subjectifying institu-
tional, social and historical discourses (Foucault, 1978; Hacking, 1995; Rose,
1996: 1801).
There is an established feminist, poststructuralist scholarship on eating dis-
orders that investigates the way in which these conditions are informed by
problematic social discourses, such as thin beauty ideals and modernist ideals
of self-control. One of the most influential and insightful poststructuralist
analyses of eating disorders is Susan Bordos (1993, 1997) work on the double-
edged notion of slenderness. Whereas some of the early feminist research on
eating disorders (e.g. Bartky, 1990) argued that women try to control their
eating in order to be attractive to the male gaze, Bordo argues that images of
thin women often have a strong emancipatory flair to them. Thus, advertise-
ments featuring thin women in business suits or engaged in various fitness
activities articulate a sense of strength and will-power. In a way they give a
new spin to the old associations between femininity and flesh or the body,
promising women that they can surpass the traditional associations of femi-
nine body, reproduction and objecthood and attain a mastery of their flesh, or
of mind over body, a decidedly masculine character trait. However, Bordo
argues that besides this progressive accent, notions of thinness also play into
and out of ancient fears of female largeness, hunger and desire. Thus, being
thin, or small, not only articulates will-power but also diminishes the person,
making her less intrusive and invasive or, intrinsically, closer to the ideal
understated femininity.
Quoting the clinical interviews of the famous psychiatrist, Hilde Bruch,
Bordo illustrates the dualistic and contradictory drive to suppress the femi-
nine that guides eating disorders:
Hilde Bruch reports that many anorectics talk of having a ghost inside them or
surrounding them, a dictator who dominates me, as one woman describes it; a
little man who objects when I eat is the description by another. The little ghost,
the dictator, the other self (as he is often described) is always male, reports
Bruch. The anorectics other self the self of the uncontrollable appetites, the
impurities and taints, the flabby will and tendency to mental torpor is the body
as we have seen. But it is also (and here the anorectics associations are surely in
the mainstream of Western culture) the female self. These two selves are per-
ceived as at constant war. But it is clear that it is the male side with its associ-
ated values of greater spirituality, higher intellectuality, strength of will that is
being expressed and developed in the anorexic syndrome. (Bordo, 1993: 155,
emphases in the original)
The insight of Bordos analysis is that it illuminates certain primordial
social dichotomies or discourses that interlace not only experiences of eating
disorders but Western thought in general. It casts something like Kiesingers
(1998) story on Abbie in an undeniably critical light. Bordos analysis makes
it clear that Kiesingers revelling on Abbies swollen body parts, folds of flesh
and clothing stained with perspiration is not any kind of intrinsic subjective
experience but thoroughly embedded in the ancient Western fear and abhor-
rence of feminine flesh. This accounts for the methodological strength of
Bordos argument, as it draws attention to how our subjective experience of
ourselves is always guided by social discourses that we are not conscious of, or
that operate behind our backs.
However, Bordos analysis also has its weaknesses. Bordos most obvious
methodological shortcoming is the way in which she snatches snippets of an
anorectics talk from a psychiatric textbook and makes grand conclusions
based on it. The original context and meaning of the womans reference to a
ghost gets lost in this trail of interpretations and, in the end, Bordo basically
makes her speech a prop for her theory on dualism without much regard for
the womans experience. This, in its turn, highlights the strength of
Kiesingers subjective analysis as it, at least, does some justice to the general
context of Abbies life.
This methodological faux pas is also indicative of the basic problem of the
objectivist, discursive analysis of the self, which posits that the scholar is able
to point objectively, or from the outside, at the discourses that guide peoples
thoughts and actions, whereas they remain completely under their spell. In a
sense, this presumption undermines Bordos criticism of dualism on two
accounts. First, her mode of analysis reproduces a dichotomy between a
knowing subject (herself) and a known object (the anorectic women, not con-
scious of why they are starving). Second, while Bordo is critical of the sup-
pression of the feminine, she also underwrites this suppression. This is
because she ends up implying that women should strive toward true, inde-
pendent subjecthood, usually associated with maleness, and overcome being
enslaved by the social (patriarchal expectations), often associated with femi-
ninity and its propensity to be influenced by others or to try to take other peo-
ples needs into account.
Between subjectivism and the social
There exists a body of feminist academic and popular writing that has
attacked feminist critiques of beauty ideals on the grounds that they frame
women as dupes who unconsciously obey patriarchy (on these debates, see
Chancer, 1998). The perhaps most notorious critic of Bordos position is
Kathy Davis (1995), who notes that women who modify their bodies are not
unaware of the discourses that guide them in this project. Drawing on her
ethnography on women who have chosen cosmetic surgery, she argues that
these women are often painfully aware of the social and even sexist nature of
the discourses that guide them in their quest to surgically alter their body.
At the beginning of her book, Davis relates how she got started on her
ethnography after having lunch with a feminist friend, who was planning to
have cosmetic surgery:
She was an attractive, self-confident, successful, professional woman. She was
also a feminist. To my surprise, she told me over coffee that she was having her
breasts enlarged. I must have looked fairly flabbergasted, as she immediately
began defending herself. She said that she was tired of putting up with being
flat-chested. She had tried everything (psychoanalysis, feminism, talks with
friends), but no matter what she did, she simply could not accept it . . . she was
very critical of the suffering women have to endure because their bodies do not
meet the normative requirements of feminine beauty. She found such norms
oppressive and believed that women in general should accept their bodies as
they are. However, she still felt compelled to have cosmetic surgery for herself.
Despite all the drawbacks of cosmetic surgery, she saw it as her only option
under the circumstances. (pp. 34, emphasis in the original)
The way in which Davis frames her friend falls between subjectivism and
poststructuralism. Her friend does not come across as if relating an asocial
true story about the horrors of being flat-chested, nor does she come across as
being duped by beauty ideals. The friend is aware that the way in which she
perceives herself as flat is guided by social and sexist discourses but she, nev-
ertheless, decides to go ahead and fix her breasts out of her own volition.
Daviss position comes close to Gubrium and Holsteins (1997) and Holstein
and Gubriums (2000) methodological position between subjectivism and
objectivism, which argues that people always have agency to construct their
selves, while they are always also constrained by institutional and social dis-
courses in this construction process.
The strength of Daviss position is that it acknowledges the ambivalent
nature of practices of the self that do not necessarily neatly fall under true
or false or empowerment or disempowerment. As Davis (1995: 58) herself
notes, this position overcomes the moralistic tone of much feminist writing
on beauty and explores the moral contradictions embedded in the way in
which women negotiate the Janus-faced decision to undergo cosmetic surgery.
However, Daviss strategy falls short of the ambivalence it professes. In a bid
to argue against the straightforward criticisms of beauty ideals, which frame
women as dupes, Davis ends up emphasizing the voluntary and informed
nature of womens decisions to change their bodies to fit the norm. She
repeatedly states how women saw their decisions to surgically alter ones body
as an act of taking their lives into their own hands and doing it for them-
selves, and not for others, even mischievously against the wishes of husbands
and other relatives (pp. 1267). By doing this, Davis ends up clutched to the
subject/object split, arguing that the women indeed are acting subjects
despite adverse circumstances. Bordo (1997) has counter-attacked Davis on
these grounds, pointing out that her voluntarism plays into and out of the
individualistic spirit that argues that people choose to have liposuction or
sleep rough that pushes under the carpet the fact that they are forced to do
these things by unequal social structures.
Daviss not wholly successful wrestling out of the subject/object dichotomy
partly has to do with her traditional methodological posture. Thus, despite all
the talk about agency and critical awareness, the women are still studied and
represented as objects, looked at, from the outside, by Davis, who sees how
they have some agency to negotiate their lives, even if being constrained by
discourses of beauty. The women are never asked what they themselves make
of this agency or freedom to act, as it is presumed that this would be above their
heads (where science works). This methodological posture partly accounts
for the fact that Daviss ambivalence turns one-eyed, in that eventually she
does not look at cosmetic surgery from multiple, morally contradictory
angles, but presents her work from one angle that ends up a classic academic
refutation of feminist beauty critiques that frame women as dupes.
Beyond subjects and objects
My interest in eating disorders, which then grew into an interest in the
methodology of studying the self, originates from my personal experience of
anorexia and dissatisfaction, or even anger, with the way in which the condi-
tion is talked about in the scholarly and popular realms. I have always felt per-
plexed and humiliated by the way in which both popular and scientific media
objectify women with eating disorders. Their words and behaviour are read as
symptoms, from which a psychological or social pathology can be read by
the expert, such as a medical scientist or even a feminist cultural critic. Yet, I
have also been intrigued by the fact that, even if there are myriad studies on
discourses, such as beauty ideals, that inform anorexia, there are very few
critical analyses of the normative or disciplinary nature of the discourses on
eating disorders themselves (for exceptions, see Probyn, 1987; Bray, 1996;
Hepworth, 1999).
However, even if my interest in the lived experience of women with eating
disorders and the discourses that I think define them/us in problematic terms
are interrelated, they also run into a contradiction, posing the question: How
can one do justice to the experience of anorexic women, often silenced as dis-
ordered and, at the same time, critically analyse discourses on eating disor-
ders, which form the very stuff out of which the experiences of anorexics are
made? Trying to answer this question led me to resort to the apparently oppo-
sitional approaches to the self in terms of telling true stories (emotivism) and
in terms of viewing self-stories as telling about the operation of social dis-
courses (poststructuralism). As has hopefully become clear from the previous
discussion, this methodological dilemma is particularly acute and complicat-
ed when studying eating disorders. This is because the dichotomy between a
knowing subject within the true, and the unknowing object outside of the
true, fuels both the experience, treatment and research on the conditions.
The way in which the methodological and substantial dimensions of the
subject/object dichotomy are intertwined was recently brought home to me
by a woman (Eleanora), who emailed me a year after I had originally sent her
my article partly based on her interview for comments (Saukko, 2000).
She wrote to me that she did not recognize herself in my description of a lone-
ly and pained child, fallen victim of forces beyond her control. She noted that
it played into the general victimizing of anorexics, which does not account for
the fact that anorexic women can also be strong. Still, she observed that the
notion that women always have to be strong may also be counterproductive
and that her own life-course, which has sidetracked her adamant goal and
career orientation, has made her more aloof and happier, even if insecure
about her future. The mini-life-story embedded in Eleanoras email brings
forth an ambivalence, which is left little space between the polarizations
between being a victim or a dupe, and being emancipated or taking ones life
into ones own hands. Her critique of my work underscores the fact that this
ambivalence between knowing and not knowing, between being in control
and out of control, cannot be articulated in theory only, but needs to under-
pin the way in which we relate to and write about the people we study.
Agonistic dialogues
In my ongoing attempt to formulate a way of doing and writing research that
would view the self as both an experiencing subject and an object of dis-
course, I have aimed to forge a position between and beyond a combination of
emotivist subjectivism and poststructuralist objectivism, using the heuristic of
agonistic dialogues. In my view, both emotivism and poststructuralism are
based on a visual quest to capture the self from the inside or the outside. A
more dialogic or conversational methodology would acknowledge that we can
never capture our selves, others or the social world, but that research is
always located in the interactive space between these three worlds. Thus, the
first aim of an agonistically dialogic mode of studying the self is to imagine a
more conversational relationship between the scholar and the people being
studied. The second aim is to come up with a dialogic mode of studying the
way in which the social infuses the subjective experience of the self. The third
aim is to envision a more dialogic social that can only be grasped from differ-
ent subjective views even if they are united by the common world.
With reference to the first point, in order to frame the interaction between
the scholar and the person being studied in dialogic terms, one can draw on
the phenomenological idea (often used by emotivist, subjective ethnography)
that we can only comprehend another persons experience by comparing it to
our own (e.g. Maso, 2001). Bringing forth the particularity and partiality of
the scholars self, such as my history as an ex-anorexic and a feminist scholar,
eases the division between a knowing subject and known object and opens the
scholars position for debate. Furthermore, one can also work to make the
research relationship more interactive and I, for example, agreed to discuss
my rendition of the womens experience with them before it was published.
My aim in using this kind of member check (e.g. Seale, 1999) was not nec-
essarily, or only, to make sure I got the womens view right. Rather, I mainly
wanted to give the women some means, however moderate, of having a say
in the way they were presented.
However, a dialogic attempt to delve into the (inter)subjective may end up
solipsistic and oblivious of the way in which it is shaped by the social, as hap-
pens in Kiesingers story of Abbie. Therefore, second, one needs to imagine a
mode of studying how the social infuses the self, different from the traditional
way of examining the social as something to which only the scholar has
access to, from the above. In my research, I wanted to explore the social in
terms of a critical conversation with the women. Thus, when I interviewed
the women, I not only asked them about their experience of anorexia and
bulimia (which inevitably led to discussions on body and beauty ideals), but I
also asked them what they thought of the discourses that define and treat the
conditions and them. This strategy undoes the traditional way of asking peo-
ple to relate their raw experience to the scholar, inviting them, in a sense, to
do poststructuralist analysis with me and to critically reflect how their expe-
rience has been constructed for them. The advantage of this strategy is that it
gives insights into the problems and possibilities embedded in the process of
picking up, or being forced to pick up, the anorexic identity or label, and also
confounds the traditional division between the knowing scholar and the peo-
ple to be known.
The third challenge was to bring the different intersubjective and social
selves that emerged from the interviews into a conversation with one another
to bring forth a more complex view of the social. When doing this, I wanted
to understand dialogue in more agonistic terms than usual. Dialogue is
often referred to in social inquiry and theory in terms of reaching some form
of consensus between different views. This consensual bent is manifested in
approaches as different as Habermasian rational public dialogue (Habermas,
1984, 1989), the new ethnographic ideas of dialogic co-construction of
reality (Lincoln and Guba, 1985, 2000; Lincoln, 1995), and notions of
triangulation, which combine different perspectives in order to get a more
accurate or, alternatively, richer view of a phenomenon (e.g. Flick, 1998).
The trouble with this consensual or amalgamating programme is that it
threatens to muddle the specificity of the perspectives which constitute it. In
research, this may undo the original quest to capture different views and lead
scholars to interpret the people they are studying in too uniform terms, which
often leads to fitting them too snugly into their political agenda (Ginsburg,
1997) or theoretical project or both, as happens in Daviss critique of feminist
beauty critiques.
To imagine a mode of combining perspectives that would do justice to both
their subjective specificity and social unity, I resorted to the idea of agonistic
dialogues, an idea originating from Greek politics, where it referred to the
quest of citizens to offer their particular perspective for others in public ora-
tions (see Arendt, 1958). Agonistic dialogues have two features, which are of
methodological importance. First, they underline the distinctive nature of
each perspective, deriving from the fact that each individual approaches the
world from a slightly different location/angle (Arendt, 1958: 57, 17780).
Second, the aim of the agonistic model is to bring different perspectives into
an egalitarian political dialogue, which alters the individual perspectives and
changes the course of history (Arendt, 1958: 1846).
The notion of agonistic dialogues asks us to pay heed to both affinities or
similarities as well as alterity or differences that interlace the relationships
between different selves. This underlines the need to do justice to experiences
that may seem incomprehensible, unacceptable, or even threatening to our
sense of our selves (like being fat or having cosmetic surgery). However, this
acknowledgement of difference does not mean to embrace the relativist or
pluralist idea that everyone can make whatever decisions and have whatever
life-styles they desire. On the contrary, in keeping with the Arendtian ideal, it
aims to pave the way for democratic politics and alliances across differences.
Rather than being predicated on debates on whether certain practices of the
self articulate subjugation or emancipation, it advocates a both/and logic that
acknowledges that practices of the self may be both subjugating and emanci-
pating, and how one views them may depend on ones subjective and social
position. The aim of agonistic dialogues is to facilitate complex (feminist)
politics, capable of accommodating differences and not suppressing them or
letting them tear the politics apart.
Beyond control
In order to illustrate how the agonistically dialogic mode of studying the self
works in practice, I now discuss how I used it in my study on women with eat-
ing disorders.
2
I start by exploring the way in which the mode of inquiry can
be used to make sense of those parts in my interviews with women, who
have had anorexia or bulimia, that focus on the central dichotomy that
underpins my methodological discussion: the distinction between subjects
and objects.
In one of my interviews, an American, female graduate student (Jeanne)
in her 30s analysed her undergraduate years, when she was anorexic, as
symptomatic of the Reagan years. This was when women were supposed to
have it all, be extremely successful in all realms and be extremely thin and
good-looking, she said. So, Jeanne found herself more and more obsessed
with eating less and less, and she exercised a lot too. I would make myself run
and run and run and run. And even though I had no energy and felt like shit,
you know, Id force myself to do this, Jeanne recounts. She also worked in
popular campus bars, where her body was constantly exposed to public dis-
play, and she used the money she made to buy fashionable clothes, such as
short tops to show off her thin body. She was also a good student and, in gen-
eral, derived pleasure from pushing herself as far as she could. According to
her own analysis:
And so I would go to the undergraduate student lounge, where people could
smoke. And Id smoke, smoke and smoke and drink diet sodas and just study into
the night. It was just this form of personal hell, but I enjoyed knowing I was get-
ting all my homework done and wasnt slacking off.
Methodologically speaking, Jeannes story can be interpreted in two basic
ways. First, it can be seen as a self-reflexive critique of the way in which the
hyper-individualist and competitive neo-conservative discourse of the 1980s
constructed femininity (this is the true story approach, with a self-reflective
spin). Second, as I had read an extraordinary amount of literature on anorexia,
and was relatively critical of it, I also read the story in terms of how the notion
of anorexia as an obsession with modern self-control permeates Jeannes self-
understanding (this is the self as constituted through social discourses
approach). One could, obviously, split the argument and say that both of these
views are true per se and illuminate different facets (subject and object) of the
experience of the self. However, this strategy reproduces the subject or object
dichotomy, in that I would be positioning myself as the knower and Jeanne
as, at best, half-knower. This view would produce two sharply distinguished
orders of knowledge, effectively discrediting Jeannes powerful personal and
political critique. In the spirit of dialogic understanding, the best one can do is
to flesh out the ambiguity of my own interpretation and the problems embed-
ded in each position. However, in order to render Jeannes story a part of a
conversation, it needs to be seen in relation to other stories, such as that of
Taru.
Taru was a Finnish undergraduate student in her 20s, who associated her
anorexia with having danced ballet in her teens. However, she was also par-
ticularly critical of the discussions and definitions on anorexia, pointing out
that they were very similar to notions she encountered when dancing ballet.
Taru observed that the discourses on anorexia were not unlike the stories in
sports and fitness magazines, which define women as always weaker than
men, with less strength, more fat and so on. Taru says stories on anorexia are
similar, defining women as weak, because they cannot take the ideological
pressure, or defining their mothers as weak. Taru recounts how for 15 years,
since the age of 5, she did everything she could to become a professional
dancer. She put herself through an excruciating regime of endless exercises,
pain, long stays abroad, crossing half of Finland to go to lessons, and nibbling
on boiled rice and Tabasco sauce. All this to make her enduring, strong, light and
flawless. And finally, she was defined as a weak, flawed poor girl who could not
make it. Taru told me she does not want to analyse the cause of her anorexia
too much: Im afraid it just reveals more weaknesses and abnormalities.
As I was interested in critically analysing discourses that define anorexia, I
was academically and personally drawn to Tarus analysis. However, when
discussing her interview at an academic conference, a member of the audi-
ence pointed out that she was still hell bent to be strong. Thus, Tarus story
can also be interpreted in two ways. First, it can be seen as a powerful self-
reflective critique of the way in which discourses that inform anorexia, as well
as discourses that define and treat the condition, move in a circle, perpetually
defining women as lacking, too weak, or as always inferior in relation to a
gendered ideal. Second, it can also be interpreted as continuing to subscribe to
the anorexic desire to be strong and not weak, therefore articulating sub-
mission to the modernist discourse that idealizes strength. However, the latter
interpretation undermines Tarus critical perspective, reading it as an indica-
tor that she is still, perhaps, caught in the anorexic mentality, or, in therapeu-
tic terms, in denial. While the notion of being in denial may have its undis-
putable therapeutic insights and effects, it still violently disinvests ones words
of any speaking power, brushing off Tarus poignant criticism as merely a
symptom of an underlying problem.
The methodological advantage of contrasting these two stories, and the
contradictory interpretations of them, is that it sets all the different views in
motion. Together, neither the stories, nor my interpretations, come across as
totally right or wrong, but they each seem to speak a partial truth. On one
level, the stories of Jeanne and Taru clash with one another. Jeanne criticizes
those discourses, which made her pursue strength to the point of destructive
anorexic obsession, whereas Taru challenges the discourse, which frames
anorexic womens ambitions and desire to be strong as merely pathological,
arguing that it simply frames women as perpetually lacking in strength. Still,
the perspectives of the two women also coalesce in that they both illuminate
the stubborn violence embedded in the distinction between being in com-
mand or strong and its negative, being victimized, marked by an elusive, and
profoundly gendered, demand of being in full and independent command of
ones life. The perspectives of the two women and their different interpreta-
tions also underline the need to envision ways of doing research that begin to
undo this obstinate dichotomy, and imagine a self, which is always ambiva-
lent, partial and complicit and never entirely enlightened or enslaved.
Toward political dialogues
Working to loosen the subject/object dichotomy is of pivotal importance in
terms of envisioning a less angst-driven personal life, and more ethical and
less simplistically judgemental interpersonal interaction, including a research
relationship. It is also of political importance, pointing at the possibly coun-
terproductive results of single-minded emancipatory politics. However,
imagining a more ambivalent self also paves the way for more dialogic politics
on other controversial issues in feminist politics. One such controversy,
besides the question of beauty, which is located at the heart of the discussion
on eating disorders, is the debate on middle-class feminism. This is of particu-
lar importance when discussing eating disorders in that while these condi-
tions are argued to epitomize female oppression, they have been traditionally
understood to affect mainly white, middle-class, Western women.
3
In order to illustrate how one may use the notion of an ambivalent self and
agonistic dialogue and to begin to imagine a feminism that is sensitive to dif-
ferences and strife between them, I now return to the interviews with Jeanne
and Taru as well as my own autobiography. The association of being anorec-
tic and being middle class is of particular personal importance to me as I had
anorexia as an 11-year-old working-class Finnish girl in the 1970s. My starv-
ing was partly informed by fantasies of being so ill that I would be taken
away from my alcoholic working-class family to a nice middle-class foster
home. I also recall abhorring the fatty foods my family consumed as a sign of
their lack of culture, which I associated with the yoghurts, spacious homes
and educated and cultivated parents that marked the lives of my peers in the
upper middle-class private school I attended. Still, I was bewildered by the
notion of an anorexic being a middle-class girl, who obsessively tries to be
pretty and good. I thought this notion did not fit me, or was wrong. I was also
deeply offended by it because the notion of the goody-goody middle-class girl
forms an integral part of working-class lore embodied, for instance, by the
then popular punk-song Rikas is ja koira (Rich daddy and a dog) that repudi-
ates the effeminate nature of normative middle-class culture.
Jeanne
4
brings up the notion of the anorexic as a white middle-class girl in
relation to a therapist, whom she perceived as cold: she went on to say:
She acted as if she didnt want to be bothered talking about this stuff. Yet, in ret-
rospect, I can see her attitude, its such a middle-class white-girl problem. She
was the head of the mental facility there, and Im sure shes seen it all; there are
people dying out there, with problems worse than anorexia, so this was proba-
bly just nothing to her.
Jeannes passing remark on the disdain and even scorn buried in the notion of
anorexia as a middle-class disease hits a personal nerve, and I ask her what
she thinks of the notion of anorexia as a problem of people who dont have
any real problems. After a pause, Jeanne responds that she does not really
have much sympathy for herself for having had it. But I think that was part
of the problem then also, I didnt have much sympathy for whining and cry-
ing about it. And it was only at the behest of other people that I took a turn
away from that she both takes a stern stance toward herself and critically
reflects on her sternness toward herself. Our conversation veers to other top-
ics and comes back to the issue of white middle-class privilege, when dis-
cussing what people think of anorexia. Its life-threatening and everything,
but it still seems so self-indulgent, I still wrestle with that, Jeanne says. Feeling
the urge to maybe somehow justify anorexia, I tell her that anorexia is also
said to be affecting poor and African-American women. Oh really, I didnt
know that, thats interesting, she responds. In an associative leap, she talks
about her father, who came from a very poor family with 10 children:
He would tell us how meal times were just this huge battle of who could get the
most food, because there was so little to go around. And he says, and he said that
to me also when I wasnt eating, that he could never understand people, who
didnt want to eat. That he would always want to eat. It was this sort of a left-
over feeling for him, from when he was growing up, that eating was survival,
whereas to me it was a way of becoming undesirable.
Taru also raised the issue of the middle-class background of anorexics,
when I asked her about peoples perceptions of anorexics:
I think there are several ways that people think of anorexia. There is this stance,
typical of young men, that, oh shit, thats sick; and that dont you tell me that
youre one of them too. This is an aggressive stance, whereas there is also this
kind of understanding attitude, typical of older women, who have sympathy or
pity toward the anorexic and are, for example, careful not to offer her any
food. . . . And then there are those, who view anorexics as women, who think
they are too precious to eat, or that anorexia is a consequence of too high stan-
dards of living, that this is something these women have simply come up with,
and that in reality everyone is free to eat good and healthy food.
Tarus last point brings into my mind my Asian friends reaction to my
research topic. She noted that people dont have anorexia where she comes
from, and that it seems to her like a disease people create when they dont have
other problems. I relate the story to Taru. Exactly, its this notion of the
anorexic as the princess with the pea under her mattress, Taru thus joins the
spirit of my anecdote.
What these three stories illuminate is that the notion of the middle-class
anorectic has many faces, working differently in different subjective and
social contexts. First, it may articulate a legitimate, working-class and post-
colonial critique of the dominant middle-class attitude, which tends to uni-
versalize and prioritize its modes of living and problems and to discredit other
grievances. This stance is articulated by my childhood working-class cultures
rejection and disdain toward middle-class culture and my Asian friends cri-
tique of my work. Second, the discourse on anorexia as the dis-ease of the
wealthy may form part of the critical self-conscious of middle-class women,
such as Jeanne, who is critically aware of her privilege and feels affinity with
people, who have less, such as her fathers childhood family. Third, the notion
of the sissy middle-class girl may also, however, reveal much about the deep-
seated sexism of working-class culture, as exemplified by the punk machismo
of my childhood friends. It may also lead to an unproductive tribalism, for
example, in academia, where different groups reject one anothers issues as
unworthy, as exemplified by my interaction with my Asian friend. Fourth, the
idea of middle-class womens whining about nothing also reveals a general
sexist tendency to belittle womens problems or label them non-progressive or
unimportant, which contributes to womens sense of shame of themselves
and their problems, as illustrated by Tarus critique.
These stories shed a different light on academic discussions of middle-class
white feminism. These discussions were initiated by women of colour, who
pointed out that white feminists tend to speak in the name of women, with-
out being aware that the issues they address are heavily class and race biased
(e.g. Moraga and Anzalda, 1984). So, for instance, a white feminist, such as
Naomi Wolf, gets considerable media attention for her critique of beauty
ideals, while feminists who speak about, for instance, African-American
womens issues are virtually silenced in the US public realm (hooks in Freire
and Macedo, 1995). This has led many white, middle-class feminists to
become more conscious and critical of their myopias (e.g. Grewal and Kaplan,
1994). However, it has also been pointed out that discussions of white middle-
class bias may lead to a pedagogy of guilt, which invites members of privi-
leged groups, for example, to join the struggle against racism in a masochis-
tic, guilt-ridden fashion and does not allow them to voice their concerns
(Ellsworth, 1989; from a different perspective, Grossberg, 1996).
An agonistic dialogic mode of research, which weaves together different
positions, allowing each to speak, but also provides illuminations and chal-
lenges from a different perspective, cultivates an and/and, instead of an
either/or, approach to these and other contentious issues surrounding
anorexia and other disorders of the self. Thus, the issue of middle-class
anorexia may be seen to speak about a painful, life-threatening condition, and
middle-class privilege, and a working-class and postcolonial attack on middle-
class culture and its privilege, and the sexist and denigrating nature of
working-class/postcolonial criticism of middle-class women. In the same way,
and with reference to the debate between Bordo (1993, 1997) and Davis
(1995), the notion of agonistic dialogue invites us to explore and acknowl-
edge the usefulness of the criticisms of strict ideals of beauty and of the
matronizing nature of criticism of these ideals, which easily lead to a condes-
cending or pitying attitude toward anorexic women, supposedly being
duped by beauty culture.
It is sometimes said that various postmodern or new modes of doing
research cultivate epistemological or political relativism (Silverman, 2001),
as they argue that any position is as good as any other. However, there is noth-
ing relativist about a dialogic political project that would, for instance, aim to
forge a leftist feminism that would be aware of the class and race biases of
many forms of feminism and the sexist nature of some leftist and working-
class positions. The same applies to a feminist politics of the body that
criticizes body ideals and is aware of the matronizing underside of these criti-
cisms. An agonistically dialogic research or political project does not dwell on
difference for its own sake, rather it aims to do justice to the complexity and
ambivalence of contemporary self and society and work against the often
one-eyed agenda of those projects, predicated on strict subject/object division,
that foreground that one view must prevail over others.
Conclusion
In conclusion, one can say that an agonistically dialogic mode of studying the
self fosters a more conversational attitude not only to research but also to per-
sonal and social life. A notion of the self that points beyond the polarization
between subjects and objects cultivates a less one-eyed and angst-driven way
of relating to our individual selves. It opens up space for the kind of ambiva-
lent attitude toward our selves, as manifested in Eleanoras criticism of the
notion of anorexic women as weak and victims and admittance that pursuing
strength has its drawbacks, as well as in Jeannes critical, political attitude
toward her middle-class privilege and acknowledgement that stern self-
criticism might also be a problem.
The notion of agonistic dialogue also imagines less judgemental interper-
sonal relations, such as those between scholars and the people being studied,
as well as between people in general. It loosens the idea that certain practices
of the self are simply right or wrong, oppressive or emancipating, overcoming
the tendency to diagnose people as being under the influence of certain dis-
courses or in denial of the true issues, which works to discredit other peoples
views that may contradict ones own. Thus, this form of dialogue invites us to
be open to different ways of approaching the world and the self and to the
beguilingly complex and contradictory ways in which practices of the self
may, for instance, demand women to be strong, condemn them for trying to
be strong, and implicitly or explicitly demand them to try to be even stronger.
Maybe most important of all, the notion of agonistic dialogue brings forth
a less monolithic notion of the social or social oppression that still does not
embrace a relativist notion of multiple subjective views views that articulate
different oppressions and are entitled to their own solutions and life choices.
On the contrary, it calls for difficult (feminist) political dialogues on the ways
in which practices of the self such as ideals of beauty and the practices of
defining and diagnosing anorexia harbour complex, possibly contradictory,
forms of subjugation. Agonistic dialogue cultivates a kind of research and pol-
itics that fleshes out the ways in which practices of the self both enable, sub-
jugate, separate and unite us, facilitating political alliances that can tackle
multiple forms of subjugation.
In the end, thinking of ways to study the self brings one to the central
methodological and political challenges of our times, namely how to under-
stand and negotiate the relationships between the personal and the political
and between unity and difference. The notion of agonistic dialogue offers
some preliminary ideas on how to begin to respond to these challenges in less
polarized terms.
ACKNOWL E DGE ME NTS
The author would like to thank Eleanora, Jeanne and Taru for interviews and the
anonymous reviewers for feedback.
NOTE S
1. The field of poststructuralist research is vast and encompasses different method-
ological approaches. Here I refer to a particular, but very common, methodologi-
cal approach to the study of the self that draws on Foucaults middle works.
2. This study forms part of a larger research project, which analyses historical, popular
and theoretical discourses on eating disorders in conjunction with exploring the
ways in which women live with and negotiate them. I have interviewed 10 American
and Finnish women about their experience of anorexia and bulimia and opinions
about discourses that define and treat those conditions (see Saukko, 1999, 2000).
The interviews with Eleanora, Jeanne and Taru have been chosen for this arti-
cle as they highlight themes that are central to the methodological argument.
3. It has been argued that anorexia has lately become more of an equal opportunity
disease and that the issues that, for example, non-white, poor or lesbian women
associate with their starving have been ignored (see Thompson, 1994).
4. Both Jeanne and Taru come from middle-class, educated, professional families.
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PAUL A S AUKKO works as a Lecturer in the Centre for Mass Communication Research,
University of Leicester. She is the author of Qualitative Research in Cultural Studies
(Sage, in press) and is currently writing another book on the discourses and lived expe-
rience of eating disorders. She has published a number of essays on qualitative
methodology and eating disorders.
Address: Centre for Mass Communication Research, University of Leicester, 104
Regent Road, Leicester LE1 7LT, UK. [email: ps39@leicester.ac.uk]

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