The 'Fat' Female Body

by S. Murray

Overview

Investigating the current interest in obesity and fatness, this book explores the problems and ambiguities that form the lived experience of 'fat' women in contemporary Western society. Engaging with dominant ideas about 'fatness', and analysing the assumptions that inform anti-fat attitudes in the West, The 'Fat' Female Body explores the moral panic over the 'obesity epidemic', and the intersection of medicine and morality in pathologising 'fat' bodies. It contributes to the emerging field of fat studies
by offering not only alternative understandings of subjectivity, the (re)production of public knowledge(s) of 'fatness', and politics of embodiment, but also the possibility of (re)reading 'fat' bodies to foster more productive social relations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349360123
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/14/2014
Edition description:	1st ed. 2008
Pages:	196
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Samantha Murray is a Senior Researcher in the Gendered Violence Research Network at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Prior to this, Samantha lectured in Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, Australia, and later worked in the not-for-profit sector. She has published several journal articles and book chapters on embodiment, and the discursive constructions of normalcy and pathology.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The 'Fat' Female Body: Pathological, Political and Phenomenological Imaginings

PART 1
Positioning 'Fatness' in Our Cultural Imaginary
The 'Normal' and the 'Pathological': 'Obesity' and the Dis-eased 'Fat' Body
'Fat' Bodies as Virtual Confessors and Medical Morality

PART 2
Fed up with Fat-Phobia: Coming Out as 'Fat'
Fat Pride and the Insistence on the Voluntarist Subject
Fattening Up Foucault: A 'Fat' Counter-Aesthetic?

PART 3
Throwing Off Discourse? Questions of Ambivalence and the Mind/Body Split
('Fat') 'Being-In-The-World': Merleau-Ponty's account of the 'body-subject'
Embodiment as Ambiguity: 'Fatness' as it is Lived

Afterword: 'Fat' Bodily Being

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"This is a courageous, poignant, honest, passionate, angry book - rare qualities in a work of scholarship." - Bioethical Inquiry

"As Murray notes, her ambition has not been to offer a new model for "fat" embodiment, but to look for new ways to understand it. Murray has succeeded in her task admirably. By moving the examination of the "fat" female body into the realm of the philosophical, she has been able to take the theory of fatness in a new exciting direction." - Hannele Harjunen, Social Semiotics

"...extremely interesting and thought-provoking..." - Melanie Latham, Social and Legal Studies Journal

Editorial Reviews

"This is a courageous, poignant, honest, passionate, angry book - rare qualities in a work of scholarship." - Bioethical Inquiry

"As Murray notes, her ambition has not been to offer a new model for "fat" embodiment, but to look for new ways to understand it. Murray has succeeded in her task admirably. By moving the examination of the "fat" female body into the realm of the philosophical, she has been able to take the theory of fatness in a new exciting direction." - Hannele Harjunen, Social Semiotics

"...extremely interesting and thought-provoking..." - Melanie Latham, Social and Legal Studies Journal

From the Publisher