Year: 2012
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Over my 20 year involvement with the movement, I have come to notice that scant\nattention is paid to fat activism. Despite intensified interest in fat in 21st century\nWestern culture, the richness of fat activism is not reflected in a somewhat meagre\nliterature, and fat activists themselves have offered few reflective or analytic accounts\nthat deal with the depth and breadth of what they do.\nFat activism offers tools with which marginalised people can adapt and develop agency,\ncommunity and capital, and contribute to social change. It has the potential to transform\nobesity policy from that which further entrenches fat people's abjection expensively, to\nthat which builds on resources more compassionately and dynamically. This research\nproject, therefore, represents one such attempt to hasten its development and overturn\nthe trend in which fat activism is routinely assumed, taken for granted, and dismissed by\nactivists, researchers, and institutions.\nI begin by situating the research within the existing literature and go on to clarify what\nfat activism is, to relate it to discourse, and to build on existing theoretical work. I argue\nagainst creating universal definitions of fat activism, and invite appreciation for its more\nambiguous forms. I produce an assemblage of fat feminist origins and travels, arguing\nthat as well as being an unlimited phenomenon, it is plural, hybrid and evolving, yet\nsuffers from stagnation. I propose that, instead of reproducing collateral damage\nthrough discourse, queering fat activism includes many communities of interest,\nquestions binaries, and welcomes multiple interventions.\nI use a scavenged autoethnography, bringing myself and the communities of fat activists\nto which I belong, into this work. This methodology draws attention to standpoint in the\nconstruction of fat narratives, expresses my frustration at reproductions of fat people as\nlifeless and passive empirical subjects, and synthesises activism and research.
Author: Charlotte Cooper
Language: English
Topic: Obesity and Health Practices
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2148418306