Paperback. A critical exploration of how Gothic tropes infiltrate wellness discourse, revealing the rhetorical forces behind our cultural obsession with food, health, and bodily control.Disgustatory! A Gothic Rhetoric of Consumption unearths the darkness behind modern obsessions with food, health, and bodily optimization. In this provocative and richly interdisciplinary work, Jeremy Tirrell and Kate Maddalena argue that contemporary discourses around food, medicine, and the body are steeped in Gothic rhetoricwhere the promise of purity and control is shadowed by monstrosity, abjection, and the uncanny.From Soylent and nootropics to probiotics and lab-grown meat, Tirrell and Maddalena show how wellness discourse is haunted by Gothic tropes: body horror, hybridity, and existential dread. Wellness culture, they argue, is not merely pseudoscience or fraud but a complex, persuasive rhetoric that blurs science and myth, purity and decay, medicine and mysticism.Disgustatory! offers a fresh framework: a "Gothic rhetoric of consumption" that explains why we are drawn to weird diets, digital detoxes, and miracle cures. Through case studies of strange substances and stranger practicesReddit fasting rituals, magic dirt supplements, fecal transplants Tirrell and Maddalena reveal how fear, fascination, and the fantasy of bodily control animate our health choices. Each chapter explores a rhetorical elementquantification, hybridity, abjection, optimization, and regulationto show how food becomes a site of cultural anxiety and existential longing. This book will appeal to rhetoricians, scholars of science and technology studies, cultural theorists, and anyone interested in the strange intersections of health, horror, and persuasion. Disgustatory! develops a Gothic rhetoric of consumption to analyze wellness discourse, revealing how food, medicine, and health practices are shaped by fear, monstrosity, and persuasive ambiguity. Through case studies of products and communities, Tirrell and Maddalena explore how rhetorical tropes structure cultural anxieties around bodily control, purity, and transformation. Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.

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Bibliographic Details

Title: Disgustatory! (Paperback)
Publisher: University Alabama Press
Publication Date: 2026
Language: English
ISBN 10: 0817362622
ISBN 13: 9780817362621
Binding: Paperback
Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

A critical exploration of how Gothic tropes infiltrate wellness discourse, revealing the rhetorical forces behind our cultural obsession with food, health, and bodily control.

Disgustatory! A Gothic Rhetoric of Consumption unearths the darkness behind modern obsessions with food, health, and bodily optimization. In this provocative and richly interdisciplinary work, Jeremy Tirrell and Kate Maddalena argue that contemporary discourses around food, medicine, and the body are steeped in Gothic rhetoric—where the promise of purity and control is shadowed by monstrosity, abjection, and the uncanny.

From Soylent and nootropics to probiotics and lab-grown meat, Tirrell and Maddalena show how wellness discourse is haunted by Gothic tropes: body horror, hybridity, and existential dread. Wellness culture, they argue, is not merely pseudoscience or fraud but a complex, persuasive rhetoric that blurs science and myth, purity and decay, medicine and mysticism.

Disgustatory! offers a fresh framework: a "Gothic rhetoric of consumption" that explains why we are drawn to weird diets, digital detoxes, and miracle cures. Through case studies of strange substances and stranger practices—Reddit fasting rituals, magic dirt supplements, fecal transplants— Tirrell and Maddalena reveal how fear, fascination, and the fantasy of bodily control animate our health choices. Each chapter explores a rhetorical element—quantification, hybridity, abjection, optimization, and regulation—to show how food becomes a site of cultural anxiety and existential longing. This book will appeal to rhetoricians, scholars of science and technology studies, cultural theorists, and anyone interested in the strange intersections of health, horror, and persuasion.

About the Authors

Jeremy Tirrell is associate professor of English at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. His articles and chapters have appeared in publications such as Technical Communication Quarterly, Enculturation, POROI, Kairos, American Journal of Entrepreneurship, and Thinking with Bruno Latour in Rhetoric and Composition.

Kate Maddalena is associate professor at the Institute of Communication, Culture, and Information Technology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Her articles and chapters have appeared in publications such as Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Canadian Journal of Communication, International Journal of Communication, Theory, Culture & Society, and POROI.

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