Understanding Contemporary Diet Culture through the Lens of Lacanian Psychoanalytic Theory

This book offers a close analysis of the relationship between diets and identity in modern Western culture through the examination of popular texts including blogs, diet books, and websites.

The relationship between consumerism and identity has been explored by scholars for decades now, but less has been said about how food and eating behaviors have been wrapped up in this relationship. Using Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, chapters investigate how diets and eating are used as a means to navigate individuals’ complex, unconscious desires and conflicts, and illustrate how diet and advertising industries use this to capitalize on the anxieties of the modern subject. The text’s psychoanalytic approach offers rare insight into the unconscious desires that dictate individuals’ choices around diets and lifestyle. By situating anxiety as the tension between jouissance and desire, the book promotes further understanding of individuals’ subjective and complex relationships with food.

Through an understanding of the subject and symptoms from a psychoanalytic perspective, we can begin to think differently about the ways we come to eating and dieting. This book will be useful for scholars and postgraduate students studying Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, consumer psychology, mental health, the sociology of culture, and social and cultural anthropology.