• Corpus ID: 141484278

The elephant in the room: fatphobia & oppression in the time of obesity

@inproceedings{Brown2013TheEI,
  title={The elephant in the room: fatphobia \& oppression in the time of obesity},
  author={Andrew Brown},
  year={2013}
}

• Andrew Brown
• Published 1 April 2013
• Political Science

Employing the social and political ontology of Iris Marion Young, this paper evaluates the claim as to
whether or not fat people are subject to oppression on the basis of their weight. It establishes clear
criteria for what constitutes oppression (exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural
imperialism, and violence), as well as a compelling epistemological argument for the need to
conceptualize structural social relations at the level of social groups. It provides a psychoanalytic
account of embodied subjectivity, and considers the implications of a fat-hating culture on subjectivity
in light of this ontology. Further, it documents the way these fatphobic cultural norms have impacted
women, with particular emphasis on the history of anorexia. Lastly, it interrogates the medical literature
surrounding obesity qua disease, as well as how the 'obesity epidemic' is both produced by, and coconstitutive
of, the process of biomedicalization in late capitalism.