Between Voice and Discourse: Quilting Interviews on Anorexia

Abstract

This article asks, “How can we be true to and respect the inner experiences of people and at the same time critically assess the cultural discourses that form the very stuff from which our experiences are made?” To answer this question, the article proposes a quilting mode of doing and writing research that aims to be sensitive to the texture and nuance of personal stories or patches and, by stitching them together, points to discursive resonances between them. The quilting approach is used to make sense of interviews conducted with five anorexic women, listening closely to the voices of these women who are often silenced as disordered, and to illustrate how they complicate and are complicated by notions of anorexics as being too dependent and/or too good.