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Keynote address given at the Second International Critical Diatetics Conference, 2 September 2012, University of Sydney by Deborah Lupton.
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Thinking about food and embodiment
Deborah Lupton, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University
of Sydney
Bodies as social constructions
• The lived experience of the body in everyday life
• How bodies are governed, regulated and controlled
• How bodies are culturally portrayed
• How other people’s bodies interact with our bodies: interembodiment/intercorporeality
• Bodies as conceptually fluid and permeable: how body boundaries (literal and symbolic) are regulated
• Bodies as assemblages
• Theorising fatness• Fatness and morality• The grotesque body• The abject body• The fluid, permeable body• Food/health/beauty triplex• HAES
Theorising fatness
Foucault:
• the body• the medical gaze• the care of the self• governmentality• biopower and biopolitics
Feminist philosophers: fluidities, leaky bodies
• Elizabeth Grosz• Julia Kristeva• Margit Shildrick
Queer theory
• The cultural construction of embodiment/identity
• Embodiment and identity as unstable• Gender and sexual identity as performed
(Judith Butler)• The challenging of normativity
Health, diet and morality
• Religious and spiritual beliefs• Health as an indicator of goodness• Body size as an indicator of self-control and
self-discipline• Ill-health and fat embodiment as indicators of
excessive consumption, lack of self-discipline
The grotesque body
• Transgression• Excess• Lack of self-discipline and self-control• Ugliness
The abject body
• Fluid, permeable• Not tightly contained or controlled• Monstrous• Object of loathing and disgust
The food/health/beauty triplex
• Health, diet and attractiveness all linked to body size
• Healthy = thin = beautiful
‘Queering’ Health at Every Size
• HAES positions concepts of the body as natural and instinctive
• By changing our view of our selves, we change others’ views
• But can ‘nature’ and the ‘instinctive’ be separated from society and culture?