The beast in me: The evolution of mad bodies in contemporary Europe

• Autores: Josep M. Comelles i Esteban
• Localización: Of Bodies and Symptoms: Anthropological Perspectives on their Social and Medical Treatment / coord. por Sylvie Fainzang, Claudie Haxaire, 2011, ISBN 978-84-694-4991-2, págs. 169-184
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The paper compares narratives and ethnographic descriptions of persons labelled as “insane” in relation to excess in the consumption of food and spirits, from the end of the 18th century to the 21st century. The comparison reveals that in the studied period the scholastic concept of “excess” - coming from Aquinas - plays a decisive role in the shaping of some eating behaviors related to food and spirits far beyond the idea of statistical normality. The paper centers particularly on the case of excess of food consumption, and the concept of excess reveals the moral implications of this kind of behaviors.