"We all want to possess a secret formula for good health and long life. If we can control what we eat, measure what we excrete, monitor what we do, coddle our fragile organs with the perfect fuel, and design chemicals to optimize our brains, can we gain power over our bodies in spite (or outside) of an institutional health care system in crisis? We are charged to find the right combination of mainstream medicine, personal practice, and magic elixir to gain an edge. Although the goal seems clean and pretty-a healthy body, a longer life-the pursuit of it quickly becomes weird, uncanny, and, some might even say, disgusting. With disturbing clarity, "Disgustatory!: A Gothic Rhetoric of Consumption" unpacks the dark side of modern wellness products and practices. From biohacking, to lab-grown flesh, to disordered eating, Tirrell and Maddalena trace Gothic traditions such as fear, body horror, and decay throughout societys present preoccupations with food, eating, and the body. The goal of "Distgustatory!" is not to expose frauds or fraudulent practices in the health and wellness industry; rather, Tirrell and Maddalena argue that clear-cut divisions between truth and lies in this field is demonstrably flawed and rhetorically inert. They acknowledge that some alternative practices can be beneficial, and that even well-intentioned, fact-based arguments have their flaws. Through each chapters examination of the dark, Gothic influences of modern eating habits, we can gain greater understanding of health and wellness trends, the gray areas between science and pseudoscience, and the motivations of consumers"-- Provided by publisher.

"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"-- Provided by publisher.