Critical feminist approaches to eating disorders and “obesity” have recently come under criticism for relying too heavily on textual- and image-based analyses of health, identity and body weight, shape, and size. In this article, we examine qualitative interviews with self-identified anorexic and “obese” women using a new material feminist lens—particularly the work of Karen Barad—to see what this perspective contributes to conceptualizations of weight-based oppressions. In addition to outlining how the material world actively participates in ongoing processes of oppression, we also highlight how the body presses back, offering up potentially less oppressive processes of materialization. The article concludes on a cautiously optimistic note, pointing to how a new materialist framework may draw attention to micropolitical processes of becoming otherwise.
BaradK (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.
2.
BaradK (2008) Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. In: AlaimoSHekmanS (eds) Material Feminisms, Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, pp. 120–154.
3.
BartkySL (1990) Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. New York: Routledge.
4.
BraidottiR (2002) Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
5.
BrayAColebrookC (1998) The haunted flesh: Corporeal feminism and the politics of (dis)embodiment. Signs24(1): 35–67.
6.
BurnsM (2009) Bodies as (im)material: Bulimia and the body image discourse. In: MalsonHBurnsM (eds) Critical Feminist Approaches to Eating Dis/Orders. London: Routledge, pp. 124–134.
7.
Carden-CoyneAForthEC (2005) Introduction: The belly and beyond—Body, self, and culture in ancient and modern times. In: Carden-CoyneAForthCE (eds) Cultures of the Abdomen: Diet, Digestion, and Fat in the Modern World. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, pp. 1–4.
8.
CollsR (2007) Materialising bodily matter: Intra-action and the embodiment of “Fat.”Geoforum38: 353–365.
9.
CooleDFrostS (2010) New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Durham: Duke University Press.
10.
DuffC (2014) Assemblages of Health: Deleuze’s Empiricism and the Ethology of Life. Dordrecht: Springer.
11.
EvansB (2010) Anticipating fatness: Childhood, affect, and the pre-emptive ‘war on obesity’. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers35(1): 21–38.
12.
EvansJRichEDaviesB, et al. (2008) Education, Disordered Eating and Obesity Discourse: Fat Fabrications. New York: Routledge.
13.
FerredayD (2012) Anorexia and abjection: A review essay. Body & Society18(2): 139–155.
14.
ForthCE (2012) Melting moments: The greasy sources of modern perceptions of fat. Cultural Moments1(1): 83–117.
15.
ForthCE (2013) The qualities of fat: Bodies, history, and materiality. Journal of Material Culture18(2): 135–154.
16.
FoxNJ (2012) The Body. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
17.
FoxNJAlldredP (2015) New materialist social inquiry: Designs, methods and the research-assemblage. Journal of Social Science Research Methodology18(4): 399–414.
18.
FoxNJ (2016) Health sociology from post-structuralism to the new materialisms. Health20(1): 62–74.
19.
FraserSMaherJWrightJ (2010) Between bodies and collectivities: Articulating the action of emotion in obesity discourse. Social Theory & Health8: 192–209.
20.
GroszE (1994) Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
21.
HardyK (2013) The education of affect: Anatomical replicas and “feeling fat.”Body & Society19(1): 3–26.
22.
HekmanS (2010) The Material of Knowledge: Feminist Disclosures. Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press.
23.
HetrickAAttigD (2009) Fat bodies, classrooms, and academic excess. In: RothblumESolovaySWannM (eds) The Fat Studies Reader. New York: New York University Press, pp. 197–204.
24.
HultmanKTaguchiHL (2010) Challenging anthropocentric analysis of visual data: A relational materialist methodological approach to educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education23(5): 525–542.
25.
JacksonAYMazzeiLA (2012) Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research. New York: Routledge.
26.
LatherP (2007) Getting Lost: Feminist Efforts toward a Double(d) Science. Albany, NY: State University Press of New York.
27.
LawJ (2004) After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. New York: Routledge.
28.
LeBescoK (2003) Revolting Bodies? The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press.
29.
LonghurstR (2000) Bodies: Exploring fluid boundaries. New York: Routledge
30.
LonghurstR (2005) Fat bodies: Developing geographical research agendas. Progress in Human Geography29: 153–164.
31.
LonghurstR (2010) The disabling affects of fat: The emotional and material geographies of some women who live in Hamilton, New Zealand. In: ChouinardVHallEWiltonR (eds) Towards Enabling Geographies: “Disabled” Bodies and Minds in Society and Space. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, pp. 199–216.
32.
MazzeiLAJacksonAY (2009) Introduction: The limit of voice. In: JacksonAYMazzeiL (eds) Voice in Qualitative Inquiry: Challenging Conventional, Interpretive, and Critical Conceptions in Qualitative Research, New York: Routledge, pp. 1–13.
33.
MolA (1999) Ontological politics: A word and some questions. In: LawJHassardJ (eds) Actor Network Theory and after. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 74–89.
34.
MolALawJ (2004) Embodied action, enacted bodies: The example of hypoglycaemia. Body & Society10(2–3): 43–62.
35.
MoolaFGairdnerSAmaraC (2013) Exercise in the care of partients with anorexia nervosa: A systematic review of the literature. Mental Health and Physical Activity6: 59–68.
NormanMEPetherickL (2016) The enemy within: Teaching ‘hard knowledges’ about ‘soft bodies’ in a Kinesiology faculty. In:CarterERussellC (eds) The Fat Pedagogy Reader: Challenging Weight-based Oppressions in Education. New York: Peter Lang Publishers, pp. 91–100.
38.
NormanMERailG (2016) Encountering fat others, embodying the thin self: Young women’s emotional orientations to fatness. Subjectivity9(3): 271–289.
39.
OwenS (2012) Living fat in a thin-centric world: Effects of spatial discrimination on fat bodies and selves. Feminism & Psychology22(3): 290–306.
40.
ProbynE (2000) Carnal Appetites: Foodsexidentities. New York: Routledge.
41.
ProbynE (2009) Fat, feelings and bodies: A critical approach to obesity. In: MalsonHBurnsM (eds) Critical Feminist Approaches to Eating Disorders. London: Routledge, pp. 113–123.
42.
RiceC (2014) Becoming Women: The Embodied Self in Image Culture. Toronto, ON, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
43.
SlocumR (2011) Race in the study of food. Progress in Human Geography35(3): 303–327.
44.
TaylorCIvinsonG (2013) Material feminisms: New directions for education. Gender and Education25(6): 665–670.
45.
WalkerdineV (2009) Biopedagogies and beyond. In: WrightJHarwoodV (eds) Biopolitics and the “Obesity Epidemic”: Governing Bodies. New York: Routledge, pp. 199–207.
46.
WarinM (2003) Miasmatic calories and saturating fats: Fear of contamination in anorexia. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry27: 77–93.
