The (Un)Fleshiness of ExistenceAn Autoethnographic Exploration of the Datafication of Eating Disorders

This paper seeks to understand how the datafication of health influences individuals’ understanding of themselves and their bodies in the context of eating disorders, particularly anorexia nervosa. Using autoethnographic methods, I begin by extending Horrocks’ (2019) concept of the Datafied Body Double (DBD) to examine how data and numbers, particularly weight, come to be the primary bearers of evidence for the claims of truth that Western biomedicine is invested in making. I identify a gap between the DBD and the lived experience of illness, resulting in a skewed perception of what eating disorders are and how to treat them. I explore how data come to discipline the body by limiting the possibilities of personhood and constraining the human condition to that which can be measured, quantified and controlled, before further identifying eating disorder treatment as an anticipatory project that depends on trends and trajectories, or what I call the narrative arcs of numbers. Finally, I reflect on the dictatorship of data—the way data come to structure behaviors, organize and, eventually, overtake thoughts. Ultimately, I call for an approach to eating disorders and eating disorders treatment that prioritizes meaning-making, situated knowledge, and ethical forms of engagement over the depersonalizing logic of data-driven health governance.