Gendered Binaries in Eating Disorder Narratives

Jacques Derrida famously pronounced that "the dual opposition (remedy/poison, good/evil, intelligible/sensible, high/low, mind/matter, life/death, inside/outside, speech/writing, etc.) organizes a conflictual, hierarchically structured field" (20). In other words, each Western concept has a counterpart that both constitutes and opposes it. These binaries allow Western cultures to categorize the world in an intelligible manner. They are also highly problematic: the "binary oppositions of metaphysics" contain "a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms controls the other ... holds the superior position" (Derrida quoted in Spivak 1xxvii). In addition, categorizing concepts into two terms obscures the similarities between the terms and the differences within each. Multiple binary oppositions can be interrelated, with privileged terms clustered together and devalued ones aligned as well. Specifically, these terms group themselves according to the gender binary, with privileged terms associated with the masculine and devalued ones considered feminine, which feminist theorists such as Luce Irigaray have argued contributes to societal misogyny (Irigaray, "Cosi Fan Tutti" 86).