The logic of anorexia lays bare the hidden workings of desire that operate
within every subject. Subjects believe that they pursue various objects of
desire (a new car, a new house, a new romantic partner, and so on) and that
these objects have an intrinsic attraction, but the real engine for their
desire resides in the nothing that the subject has given up and that every
object tries and fails to represent. Objects of desire are desirable only
insofar as they attempt to represent the impossible lost object, which is
what the anorexic reveals. Still, the anorexic is exceptional; most
nonanorexic subjects imagine that their lost object can be found in something
rather than nothing.
──Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis