Can the Abject be Subject? Conceptualizing Epistemologies for Fat Identities

• In Event: The Coloniality of Fatness: Epistemologies and Erotics of Fleshiness

Abstract

What can be imagined for non-Western fat epistemologies? A history of changing meanings of fatness in the West elucidates how Western modes of knowledge production position fatness as always volitional, always impermanent, and a condition of being which requires alteration and improvement. The social and cultural meanings of fat in the West diminish possibilities of fat as subject identity because, as the abject, “fat” is framed in the state of being cast off. This paper explores how fat subjectivities can be accessed “from below,” through non-Western epistemologies, in order to produce new understandings of fat as a viable subject identity.

Presenter

• Katherine Anne Phelps, University of Wisconsin-Madison