fat acceptance and political theory

Okay! This is the text of an email I sent to my supervisor outlining literally all of my thoughts on approaching the Fat Acceptance movement as a question of critical political theory. Obviously this is a work in progress (I have yet to hear back from him telling me I'm full of shit, etc.) so the way this topic gets discussed is subject to change (I'll be really surprised if I can keep all the 'wacky' Lacanian theory in there). But I personally think it's pretty good, at least as a really broad outline based on reading 1.5 books, haha.
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The subject of 'fat acceptance' is an increasingly prevalent question within identity politics circles and I think it definitely warrants some attention from the field of political theory. Is this really just a question of healthcare policy and the administration of a public health crisis, or does it really make sense to think of fat people as a social group subject to its own oppressions and in need of some particular political or legal protections?

I feel like this is the foundational question for any investigation into the subject.

First, I feel like it is important to address the question of whether or not obesity is a 'disease' (that is, accepting it as a medical condition/problem), or whether fatness should be considered as just one other largely aesthetic difference between human bodies. Obviously where one falls on this question will play a major part in determining how political theory can deal with the fat acceptance movement.

Gard and Wright (2008) provide an excellent overview of this question. They have a very comprehensive survey of the established empirical research on the relationship between obesity, weight loss, physical activity, and overall health; based on their overview[1], the current state of obesity science is, at best, significantly more ambiguous, inconclusive, and generally counter-intuitive than the layperson might assume and, at worst, a (Foucauldian) discourse perforated with unfounded normative and aesthetic biases.

According to Gard and Wright, while there is a connection between general well-being and physical activity, the relationship between these two factors and obesity is generally overblown; while obesity does correlate with the presence of heart disease, diabetes, and other medical problems, there is little or no evidence to indicate that obesity is a causal factor for these diseases (that is, 'obesity' is a spurious variable). Empirically, there are no conclusive links between physical activity (or lack thereof) and obesity/weight loss, nor between obesity and overeating; moreover, the risk of mortality associated with obesity appears to be minimal at best. In all, their research would indicate that the medical concern over obesity is substantially overblown, and that instead our popular thinking about the 'obesity epidemic' is ultimately just a moral panic. Based on their work, 'obesity' appears to be as much a pathological disease as shortness or homosexuality.

While Gard's and Wrights' conclusions are important to the discussion on whether or not fat people (as a social group) suffer discrimination, I think the best way to proceed with elaborating this argument is to return to this later and instead focus on exactly how fatness could be an identity in the political sense. Specifically, this will fall back on a more abstract discussion on the very nature of identity (especially when conceived socio-politically), human subjectivity and what 'identity politics' might entail from a critical perspective.

In particular (off the top of my head), I will be engaging with Iris Young's definition of a social group (from Justice and the Politics of Difference, 1990), as well as the Lacanian-Marxist conceptions of human agency and subjectivity made famous by Slavoj Zizek. Although coming from very different intellectual backgrounds, it is my wager that there is substantial common ground between the critical strain of Anglo-American political philosophy and the critical Continental traditions of psychoanalysis and Marxist social thought, and that establishing this intellectual dialogue is one of the urgent tasks of contemporary political philosophy. Above all, I believe that both these overarching conceptual apparatuses bring useful intellectual tools for thinking about fatness as an identity, and in elaborating the theoretical and practical consequences of this position.

At the outset, I think 'fat people' as a social group is a tenable position – it fits Young's criteria (ontologically prior to an individual in a way which 'defines' parts of that individual to a greater or lesser extent, an effect of social relations, subject to a calculus of privilege/oppression, etc.)[2]. Not only that, but 'fatness' as a social identity intersects with other loaded forms of social identity – particularly gender and class – to add new dimensions to already existing forms of oppression[3].

Obviously, the discussion won't be quite so straightforward when it is actually put together. In order to elucidate both the foundational theory of identity and each particular form of oppression being discussed, and to connect both into a very tight understanding of the totality of the issue, I will need to build on everything dialectically. Having first outlined how fatness can be conceptualised as a social identity (as opposed to being 'diseased'), the first logical step is to define oppression, and how a social group can be oppressed. Young (1990) again provides a good starting point here with a very systematic and rigorous definition of oppression; from the perspective of the fat acceptance movement, there is definitely an element of marginalisation (e.g. Schwartz et al. (2003) confirm a prevalence of both implicit and explicit “weight prejudice” among many health professionals, etc.), some 'lighter' forms of violence[4] as she defines it (verbal abuse, etc.), and what she calls 'cultural imperialism' (although the colloquial term 'shaming' might fit better in this particular case) in the sense of being subjected to cultural norms that are demeaning or otherwise damaging or oppressive, etc. There is also definitely a case to be made for something resembling exploitation as Young (following Marx) defines it, but with a specifically Lacanian twist; that is, the manipulation of jouissance (Enjoyment), driven by the processes of the accumulation of Capital. This last argument is fairly complex, and in order to get to that point I will have to steadily build up to it, starting first by analyzing the most well-documented case of fat prejudice: the intersection of fatness and femininity.

There is (comparatively) an extensive literature on the stigmatization of fatness as a feminist issue. Indeed, most of the forms of oppression related to fatness have traditionally been almost primarily borne by fat women (although increasingly men are also beginning to experience many of the same problems). A major theme here is the way stigmatizing fatness is one of the most effective means of policing (or disciplining, in the Foucauldian sense) the feminine body; and, considering the scientific categorization of fatness qua 'obesity epidemic', this disciplinary power is only expanding. So both the liberal (body image, self-respect, etc.) and radical (obesity science as a Foucauldian discourse for reproducing sexist social norms, etc.) feminist critiques will be engaged here.

I think there is room here also to discuss these feminist critiques in light of the particular focus on childhood obesity, as it serves as a good illustration for many of the arguments introduced up to now. First and foremost, the survey of the literature provided by Gard and Wright (2008) indicates a tendency among many academic researchers (as well as popular authors) to pin responsibility for this 'health crisis' on parents – specifically, mothers (the 'single working mother' is the target of a number of polemics against childhood obesity), which is the touchstone of a number of feminist critiques. Moreover, many anti-obesity measures enacted in schools ('public weighings' during physical education classes, barring obese students from purchasing food at the cafeteria, etc.) have particularly perverse effects; not only are larger students alienated from their peers, but it serves to integrate young children (especially girls) into the disciplinary practice of policing the body[5].

This emphasis on the control, monitoring, and disciplining of the fat body leads to the next discussion about the political economy of Enjoyment and desire in the liberal democracies of late capitalism. This is a lot to unpack, but necessary to understand all the implications of considering fatness politically; ultimately, I will argue that it is the link between the current 'obesity epidemic' mania and the (Capital-structured) administration of Enjoyment that elevates fatness from being just another contingent, “identifying” feature of a human being (e.g. baldness, height, etc.) to a fully politicized social identity.

Much of the discursive practices surrounding fat people (women, in particular) centres on notions of enjoyment; most people intuitively 'know' that obesity is the result of 'over-indulgence', a fat person is seen to have 'let themselves go', etc. Correspondingly, much of the more 'orthodox' liberal strain of fat activism is dedicated to fighting the negative stereotypes of fat people as lazy, gluttonous, unhygienic, etc.; for some, the message of fat acceptance is 'accept those of us who are trying to lose weight/'live a healthy lifestyle' – who do not enjoy their fatness – but for whatever reason (genetics, etc.) cannot.'[6]

Framing this all in terms of the politics of jouissance highlights that this is a pathological position to adopt; subdividing 'fat people' into 'good' and 'bad' only perpetuates the cycles of oppression described earlier – it leads to an acceptance of 'fat people' insofar as they are not responsible for their fatness and, if given the opportunity, would not be fat. In this way, the normative and aesthetic bias against the fat body is actually reinforced; following Alain Badiou (2001), if fat acceptance is to mean anything at all (hence my preference for the term 'liberation' above 'acceptance'), it must include the acceptance of those who do explicitly Enjoy their fatness in contravention of social norms.

This leads into a broader discussion about the ways jouissance is ordered and structured through social relations in the parliamentary democracies of late modern capitalism. This will entail a discussion of the way in which Slavoj Zizek has meshed 'traditional' Marxist political economy with Lacanian psychoanalysis in a way that allows us to outline the general theory of a dialectical relationship between human subjectivity and the accumulation of Capital.

The policing of the fat body has its own role(s) to play in the reproduction of capitalist social relations. The elevation of fatness into an object of significant libidinal investment for many people (possibly the vast majority, at least among women) subjects the individuals to the logic of the 'superego injunction to enjoy', generating not only vast amounts of anxiety but also an endless pursuit of some way – any way – to successfully lose or keep off weight that is an increasingly lucrative market[7]. Moreover, there is an established link between fatness and social class; most empirical studies demonstrate that more affluent individuals are thinner and that obesity rates are higher among the working class[8]. The larger implications of this intersection of fatness and class is something that warrants an investigation, particularly in this discussion on the role of fat stigma in the reproduction of capitalism.

This would basically wrap up the discussion on oppression. By this point I will hope to have established a firm ontology of the human subject and the logic of identification, as well as a thorough social ontology for life in late capitalism. I also hope that this theory will demonstrate that analytic and Continental political philosophy are basically commensurable, and that establishing this connection produces invaluable new ways of conceptualizing political problems.

I would like at this point to address some of those problems, and start thinking about some solutions. This section is sort of ambiguous now, but I imagine that once I spend some time extensively thinking about the problems, some sense of practical policy should emerge. Already there are a few off the top of my head (including weight/size in anti-discrimination legislation, cultural/aesthetic movements to show the fat body in a positive light, etc.) and I am confident that after a more thorough review of the literature there will be something a little more concrete here.

In all, this is the rough outline of my thoughts on this topic going forward. I think 'fat liberation' definitely works as a good, practical political problem which can be addressed concisely by political theory; I believe a convincing case can be made that this involves instances of legitimate oppression and affronts to justice and liberty. Obviously while the specific details of the argument remain to be hammered out, I think the general thrust I have outlined here is a good rough guide for writing this thesis.

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Notes:

[1] The primary sources of which will admittedly need to be verified, but methodologically their book is sound, they are both academics working in the field of health science and human kinetics, and it is extremely well-sourced.
[2] And I feel the impact of these points are all better elucidated through recourse to Lacanian psychoanalysis...
[3] The intersection of fatness and gender is already well documented by a number of feminists, for instance.
[4] A recourse to Zizek (2006) here is useful. He highlights three distinct forms violence can take: subjective, objective, and symbolic. For the purposes of this discussion, we would be mostly dealing with the latter two.
[5] It is worth noting here that a recent study of young students in Taiwan found that almost 16% of children aged 10-12 had used self-induced vomiting as a weight loss method (Mei Liou, 2011).
[6] This is presumably to address the criticism that 'fat acceptance' represents a social danger – encouraging people to live unhealthy/'unfulfilled' lives, etc.
[7] Paul Campos (2003) estimates the value of the diet industry to be in the ballpark of $40 billion (US) a year in the United States alone; it is worth noting also that a lot of research in the field of obesity science is funded by companies with a vested interest in the weight-loss industry. This, of course, is to say nothing of the rise in increasingly invasive (and dangerous) private weight-loss surgeries...
[8] Again, the 'single working parent [mother] and her [neglected] obese children' emerges as a demonized figure here.

some thoughts on newfoundland nationalism

"...[N]ational heritage [is] a kind of ideological fossil created retroactively by the ruling ideology in order to blur its present antagonism." - Slavoj Zizek

There is definitely some weight to this idea. If I recall correctly most of the literature on the genesis of nationalism as an ideological phenomenon indicates it tends to form as economic development in a given society progresses from a primarily "feudal"/heavily agricultural/subsistence economic arrangement into modernity, and it almost always originates among the educated (read: well-off) classes. This is why I would suspect we didn't see the meaningful appearance of [political] nationalist sentiment in Newfoundland until the late 1960s/early 1970s; it was only then that the province had enough people well-off enough to give a shit about 'standing up for Newfoundland' (I don't think the Anti-Confederate campaign in the late 1940s was ever fundamentally motivated by nationalism [although it was obviously present, ideologically] - it was primarily a question of economic and political power for the business/political class in St. John's and the pulp-and-paper corporate fiefdoms of Grand Falls and Corner Brook. Confederation meant a loss of control by local [commercial, political, clerical] elites over taxation, economic regulation, etc etc etc.)

More importantly I think this particular idea - nationalism as ideology being a retroactive construction in order to mask a present social antagonism - is a good way to begin an analysis of the way nationalism has played a role in provincial politics since the beginning of the Williams administration. Presumably anyone reading this would be familiar with the way the provincial government has been shutting down political opposition (not just the Official Opposition in the House of Assembly, but wider media scrutiny and citizen dissent) by appealing to the Nation - recall the Premier answering Yvonne Jones' questions about the Abitibi expropriation (or the legal dealings with Quebec, or [political issue of the day]...) by implying she was a traitor!

The real question in this situation is to try and determine what social antagonisms nationalist ideology in its present manifestation is blurring. While I'm sure there are many, a few in particular grab my immediate attention - the 'conflict' between 'rural' and 'urban' Newfoundland ('rural' being primarily working-class, "traditional" economy of fishing, agriculture, manual labour, etc. with 'urban' being primarily the oil/gas industry, finance and commerce, etc.), and, as always, the broader class antagonism in this province that is beyond being pinned down to a matter of geographical location; I'm sure any of the unions who've run afoul of the provincial government could testify to this point.

Here I don't think it's hard to see why nationalism works so well as an ideology in the 'Zizekian' sense - what better way to override the actual antagonism between 'have' and 'have not' (to use the popular terminology) than to have us live within a conceptual framework where we are all 'Newfoundlanders and Labradorians', all of us united as a 'nation' with an illustrious historical narrative united against the Other[s] (the federal government, Big Oil/Pulp and Paper/Greenpeace, Quebec, etc). The provincial government here especially likes to make a full identification with nationalist ideology; the House of Assembly is where we are politically represented, and the governing party has an extraordinarily strong mandate (they control roughly 90% of the seats) with an extraordinarily strong executive branch - which leaves us with the bizarre political configuration where the Premier [on his own or through his cabinet] can effectively (if the opinion polls are to be believed) declare that "Le Nation, c'est l'Etat.. et l'Etat, c'est moi."

Obviously this is a very rough sketch of an ideological critique of the present political climate in this province. I think it's a good foundation at least, and if nothing else, some food for thought. But I definitely would consider it as something worth a bit of concerted research.

will the cat above the precipice fall down? slavoj zizek on the iranian situation

here is a blog post about important world news not related to michael jackson. understandably with terrible media practices infecting virtually all forms of global news coverage it is very hard to gain any kind of coherent picture of what is actually happening in iran outside of whatever western partisan talking points exist.

to remedy this, i have here a piece by slovenian philosopher slavoj zizek who is a smart guy who says a lot of really smart things. read it!!

This piece is copyright-free. Please distribute widely.

WILL THE CAT ABOVE THE PRECIPICE FALL DOWN?

Slavoj Zizek

When an authoritarian regime approaches its final crisis, its dissolution as a rule follows two steps. Before its actual collapse, a mysterious rupture takes place: all of a sudden people know that the game is over, they are simply no longer afraid. It is not only that the regime loses its legitimacy, its exercise of power itself is perceived as an impotent panic reaction. We all know the classic scene from cartoons: the cat reaches a precipice, but it goes on walking, ignoring the fact that there is no ground under its feet; it starts to fall only when it looks down and notices the abyss. When it loses its authority, the regime is like a cat above the precipice: in order to fall, it only has to be reminded to look down…

In Shah of Shahs, a classic account of the Khomeini revolution, Ryszard Kapuscinski located the precise moment of this rupture: at a Tehran crossroad, a single demonstrator refused to budge when a policeman shouted at him to move, and the embarrassed policeman simply withdrew; in a couple of hours, all Tehran knew about this incident, and although there were street fights going on for weeks, everyone somehow knew the game is over. Is something similar going on now?

There are many versions of the events in Tehran. Some see in the protests the culmination of the pro-Western “reform movement” along the lines of the “orange” revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, etc. – a secular reaction to the Khomeini revolution. They support the protests as the first step towards a new liberal-democratic secular Iran freed of Muslim fundamentalism. They are counteracted by skeptics who think that Ahmadinejad really won: he is the voice of the majority, while the support of Mousavi comes from the middle classes and their gilded youth. In short: let’s drop the illusions and face the fact that, in Ahmadinejad, Iran has a president it deserves. Then there are those who dismiss Mousavi as a member of the cleric establishment with merely cosmetic differences from Ahmadinejad: Mousavi also wants to continue the atomic energy program, he is against recognizing Israel, plus he enjoyed the full support of Khomeini as a prime minister in the years of the war with Iraq.

Finally, the saddest of them all are the Leftist supporters of Ahmadinejad: what is really at stake for them is Iranian independence. Ahmadinejad won because he stood up for the country’s independence, exposed elite corruption and used oil wealth to boost the incomes of the poor majority – this is, so we are told, the true Ahmadinejad beneath the Western-media image of a holocaust-denying fanatic. According to this view, what is effectively going on now in Iran is a repetition of the 1953 overthrow of Mossadegh – a West-financed coup against the legitimate president. This view not only ignores facts: the high electoral participation – up from the usual 55% to 85% - can only be explained as a protest vote. It also displays its blindness for a genuine demonstration of popular will, patronizingly assuming that, for the backward Iranians, Ahmadinejad is good enough - they are not yet sufficiently mature to be ruled by a secular Left.

Opposed as they are, all these versions read the Iranian protests along the axis of Islamic hardliners versus pro-Western liberal reformists, which is why they find it so difficult to locate Mousavi: is he a Western-backed reformer who wants more personal freedom and market economy, or a member of the cleric establishment whose eventual victory would not affect in any serious way the nature of the regime? Such extreme oscillations demonstrate that they all miss the true nature of the protests.

The green color adopted by the Mousavi supporters, the cries of “Allah akbar!” that resonate from the roofs of Tehran in the evening darkness, clearly indicate that they see their activity as the repetition of the 1979 Khomeini revolution, as the return to its roots, the undoing of the revolution’s later corruption. This return to the roots is not only programmatic; it concerns even more the mode of activity of the crowds: the emphatic unity of the people, their all-encompassing solidarity, creative self-organization, improvising of the ways to articulate protest, the unique mixture of spontaneity and discipline, like the ominous march of thousands in complete silence. We are dealing with a genuine popular uprising of the deceived partisans of the Khomeini revolution.

There are a couple of crucial consequences to be drawn from this insight. First, Ahmadinejad is not the hero of the Islamist poor, but a genuine corrupted Islamo-Fascist populist, a kind of Iranian Berlusconi whose mixture of clownish posturing and ruthless power politics is causing unease even among the majority of ayatollahs. His demagogic distributing of crumbs to the poor should not deceive us: behind him are not only organs of police repression and a very Westernized PR apparatus, but also a strong new rich class, the result of the regime’s corruption (Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is not a working class militia, but a mega-corporation, the strongest center of wealth in the country).

Second, one should draw a clear difference between the two main candidates opposed to Ahmadinejad, Mehdi Karroubi and Mousavi. Karroubi effectively is a reformist, basically proposing the Iranian version of identity politics, promising favors to all particular groups.Mousavi is something entirely different: his name stands for the genuine resuscitation of the popular dream which sustained the Khomeini revolution. Even if this dream was a utopia, one should recognize in it the genuine utopia of the revolution itself. What this means is that the 1979 Khomeini revolution cannot be reduced to a hard line Islamist takeover – it was much more. Now is the time to remember the incredible effervescence of the first year after the revolution, with the breath-taking explosion of political and social creativity, organizational experiments and debates among students and ordinary people. The very fact that this explosion had to be stifled demonstrates that the Khomeini revolution was an authentic political event, a momentary opening that unleashed unheard-of forces of social transformation, a moment in which “everything seemed possible.” What followed was a gradual closing through the take-over of political control by the Islam establishment. To put it in Freudian terms, today’s protest movement is the “return of the repressed” of the Khomeini revolution.

And, last but not least, what this means is that there is a genuine liberating potential in Islam – to find a “good” Islam, one doesn’t have to go back to the 10th century, we have it right here, in front of our eyes.

The future is uncertain – in all probability, those in power will contain the popular explosion, and the cat will not fall into the precipice, but regain ground. However, it will no longer be the same regime, but just one corrupted authoritarian rule among others. Whatever the outcome, it is vitally important to keep in mind that we are witnessing a great emancipatory event which doesn’t fit the frame of the struggle between pro-Western liberals and anti-Western fundamentalists. If our cynical pragmatism will make us lose the capacity to recognize this emancipatory dimension, then we in the West are effectively entering a post-democratic era, getting ready for our own Ahmadinejads. Italians already know his name: Berlusconi. Others are waiting in line.

http://supportiran.blogspot.com/2009/06/slavoj-zizeks-new-text-on-iran.html