So many stories! Narrating the experience of anorexia to reflect on care work

Abstract

This paper investigates the transformative potential of life histories affected by suffering and illness, when these stories become the focus of relational and systemic reflexivity. These stories can concern everyone, including healthcare professionals. Starting from the personal experience of anorexia of the two authors, researchers and social workers, the paper is positioned among the studies that give voice to anorexics, going beyond the debate that opposes two dominant interpretations, the medical and the feminist one. The authors propose a duoethnographic dialogue that tries to open new interpretative readings on the experience of gravity, nurturing a new posture that still informs and orients their professionalism today.