Blue like an orange: on writing, mourning, and anorexia

Dominique Hecq's chapter emphasises that the creative practice and theory are not only intertwined, but can also serve as a means of 'fictocriticism' whereby the relationship between writing and food can be investigated, specifically in relation to the work of mourning. Drawing on Jacques Lacan's notion of suppleance as 'a kind of stand in that helps the self cohere,' Hecq argues that writing and the mourning anorexic obsessed with food and its preparation operates under the same economy as the 'enigma of suppleance.' The chapter on Hecq's 'Hush', a memoir of cot death, comments on the role that food - in both literal and metaphorical forms - as lack and sustenance can play in the mourning process. This chapter concludes that what feeds the anorexic writer is her ability to shift from 'the metonymic axis of language to the metaphorical.'