Fat, Queer, Dead: 'Obesity' and the Death Drive (original) (raw)

No Fat Future? The Uses of Anti-Social Queer Theory for Fat Activism

chapter in: Queer Futures: Reconsidering Normativity, Activism and the Political (eds E. Haschemi Yekani et al. p21-36), 2013

This chapter examines the possible connections between anti-social queer theory and fat politics, and the consequences for activism. Intersections between fat and queer identities, particularly in terms of their potential to be reclaimed politically, have previously been explored within fat studies (LeBesco, 2001, 2004). However, as an emerging locus of activism, fat politics, like queer, may be able to move beyond both liberal individualist and resignificatory politics via a turn to the anti-social as suggested by Edelman (2004) and Halberstam (2008). Fat politics fit this turn in queer theory because contemporary discourses of the obesity ‘epidemic’ in the West are engaged in the construction of fat not only as an individual moral failure, but as profoundly anti-social. The fat subject is being made knowable through its proximity to death, disease and sterility and the strain it places on collective resources. Anti-obesity discourse envisions not only a fat free future, but attempts to restore subjects to a position inside the heteronormatively gendered, fully reproductive social order. It is not just fat, but the fat subject’s queerness that is under threat of erasure. This chapter reads the discourse of the obesity epidemic in terms of its production of the fat subject as a figure with ‘no future’, and argues that, like Edelman’s queer subject, the fat subject is conjured to embody the death drive and to stand as the other of a foundational logic of reproductive futurity. It explores Edelman’s embrace of negativity in terms of the possibilities it opens for fat activism using The Chubsters, a UK-based fat/queer activist project, as a case study. The Chubsters’ style of political engagement precisely revels in the abjection fat/queer subjects are cast in. They appear to embody the ‘turn away from the comfort zone of polite exchange’ Halberstam (2008:154) proposes for a successful anti-social politics. However, can The Chubsters ‘fuck the future’, or are they implicitly invested in creating liveable lives for future fat/queer subjects? In a cultural climate that calls for the erasure of a fat future, is celebrating anti-futurity a productive option for fat activism?

Obstinate fatties: Fat activism, queer negativity, and the celebration of ‘obesity’

Subjectivity, 2016

In the face of current 'obesity epidemic' rhetoric that pathologises and ridicules fat bodies, much activist work around fat acceptance is focused on humanising and redemptive efforts to reduce stigma and prejudice. However, amongst these earnest attempts to change public opinion there is a realm of decidedly queer fat activist activity that indulges in unabashed revelry in fatness, highlighting ways in which fat subjectivities are constructed through narratives of trauma, shame and ill-health. This article uses the lens of negativity emerging from queer theory to examine these queer acts of impudence and argue that there is something radically, queerly liberating at play in the audacious refusal to be a 'good fatty'.

“Writing the History of Fat Agency”, in: Body Politics 3/5 (2015), 13-24.

Body Politics, 2015

The article takes up current scholarship on fat history and outlines three aspects of fat history as a critical “history of the present.” Firstly, it points to a crucial shift in the politics of fat at the end of the 19th century. In the course of fat becoming a biopolitical vanishing point, fighting fat became an intersectional terrain for individuals to perform their ability to conduct themselves successfully. Secondly, it stresses the fruitfulness of dis/ability studies for a critique of fatphobia’s reiteration of an unattainable ideal of able, healthy, and productive bodies. Thirdly, the author critically discusses problems and promises of writing histories of agency and suggests an engagement with the agency of matter.

Fat Politics: Collected Writings

This publication is a collection of short articles published by sociologist Deborah Lupton on her blog and The Conversation website dealing with topics relating to the politics of body weight. The articles include discussion of obesity and fat politics, fat activism, the Health at Every Size movement, fat stigma and discrimination, motherhood and children’s body weight, the use of disgust in anti-obesity campaigns and pro-ana websites.

"When Does Fat Matter?" Obesity, Risk and the Politics of Futurity

The “obesity epidemic” has become one of the most divisive public health issues of our time. It divides us politically by creating factions: those who believe immediate intervention is necessary to scale back obesity rates to pre-millennial levels struggle to communicate productively with those who dismiss governmental measures to combat obesity as attempts to resuscitate the “nanny state.” Those who believe being overweight or obese is the effect of an irresponsible individual’s lifestyle choices give little credence to advocates of a more structural critique emphasizing free market capitalism’s establishment of parameters that compel people—and, in particular, economically disadvantaged people—to make unhealthy choices. In this essay I align with the 1 group of critics who identify as obesity sceptics: scholars who read any ideological formulation of the obesity problem with irreverence and do not concede the veracity of the “epidemic” without some reservation. My focus here is on the rise of a certain state paternalism in response to obesity and what this shift in risk-perception suggests about the role of belief in creating the conditions for a public health emergency. The crucial factor here is potentiality: while dangers are concrete situations that imply a requisite reaction, risks represent emerging and often contentious threats. Rather than reducing the politics of obesity-fighting projects to cost/benefit analysis, then, I seek to find a language that re-opens the problem and complicates the diverse assumptions about individuals, structures and temporalities informing the epidemiology of obesity.

Fat is a Sociological Issue: Obesity Rates in Late Modern, ‘Body-Conscious’ Societies

Social Theory & Health, 2004

This paper seeks to explore the sociological dynamics of the current escalation in rates of obesity in late modern societies, focusing both upon the causes of this escalation and its consequences. The paper has three aims. Firstly, I aim to open up a sociological debate on obesity and to show that this is an issue we can both contribute to and learn from. While lifestyle and the body-society relationship are of obvious importance in current debates on obesity, the input of sociology to these debates has been minimal. The debate has been pulled onto the territory of psychology, genetics and related disciplines. I hope here to make a preliminary step towards correcting this. Secondly, I juxtapose the trend towards obesity with sociological claims regarding our allegedly 'body conscious' societies. Many sociologists claim that late modern social agents are increasingly preoccupied with their bodies, and with the pursuit of bodily perfection through diet, exercise etc. The obesity trend suggests a rather different picture. I aim to reconcile these partial pictures of the body in late modern societies. Finally, I use obesity as a way of exploring relations between biology and society. Involuntary weight gain, I suggest, provides an excellent case study for thinking about the interaction of biological and social processes.

Apocalyptic public health: Exploring discourses of fatness in childhood 'obesity' policy

Journal of Education Policy, 2019

Recent ‘obesity’ preventions focus heavily on children, widely regarded as the future of society. The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) is a flagship government programme in England that annually measures the Body Mass Index (BMI) of children in Reception (aged 4-5) and Year 6 (aged 10-11) in order to identify ‘at risk’ children and offer advice to parents. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis this study explores how discourses within the programme construct fatness. The NCMP materials contain three key interrelated themes (concerning the hidden threat of ‘obesity’, the burden of ‘obesity’, and bodies that pose a greater risk) that combine to construct a ‘grotesque discourse’ of apocalyptic public health. ‘Obesity’ is constructed as a social and economic catastrophe where certain bodies pose a greater threat than others. We argue that this discourse has the potential to change health service policy in markedly regressive ways that will disproportionately impact working-class, Black, Asian, and mixed race families.