33 Body, technique, subjectivities June 2004

PRESS AND BIOTECHNOLOGY, FREEDOM AND RISK
Bulimics as a metaphor of actuality

Mônica Carvalho Zavarese
Psychologist and PhD candidate, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

Portuguese

Foucault and the power as productive net. Control of the risks and freedom at the present time. Introduction of the metaphor of bulimia that, as the word «metaphor» itself tells, does not refer to the sick person but to a similarity relation that intends to trace the profile of a maximal adjustment to contemporary values. These values are ratified and rethought every minute by the mass communication media. A bulimic person represents the typical persona of our time, the character through which it would be expressed, with larger intensity, the net that weaves the power relations, the exercise of freedom and the anguish in the presence of the uncertainty of the future. Bulimia isn’t treated anymore as a disease classified in the medicine annals, but rather as an update model of our epoch, that seems to be homologated by the media through the divulging of one of the most acclaimed biotechnologies against obesity: the medication Xenical.