RIOTS NOT DIETS: A QUEER HISTORY OF FAT ACTIVISM IN TWENTIETH CENTURY BRITAIN

摘要我的项目探索了英国脂肪解放的起源。使用文本、材料和口头史料的混合来源，我利用一个奇怪的理论框架来分析和解释英国肥胖激进主义的历史，可以说，英国肥胖激进主义的历史随着的全国肥胖妇女会议而达到顶峰。在英国同性恋和女权主义的历史上，会议本身和召集会议的组织--伦敦肥胖妇女团体(LFWG)--一直被忽视。我的研究旨在纠正这种不平衡，并通过分析肥胖是对异性恋的一种奇怪的破坏，来丰富目前英国同性恋和女权主义激进主义的历史。研究背景、目标和好处我的研究考察了20世纪中后期英国肥胖和脂肪解放的历史。它建立在我的MA酷儿历史论文的基础上，这篇论文目前存放在毕晓普斯盖特研究所，它将全国肥胖妇女大会置于20世纪70-80年代英国酷儿历史的更大历史背景中。我的博士研究在空间和时间上扩展，以展示英国的肥胖和同性恋激进主义是如何在NFWC之前和之后对抗系统性反肥胖的。这样做，它阐明了同性恋和肥胖历史的交叉，这两种历史经常被视为相互排斥。虽然考虑肥胖交叉性的学术工作越来越多，但这些工作的绝大多数都是在历史以外的学科中进行的(。此外，肥胖史的学者很少考虑酷儿或酷儿理论(Rensenbrink 2010；Simic 2015；Strings 2019)。令人奇怪的肥胖的学者可能会从历史的角度阐述他们的论点，但他们不是历史学家(勒贝斯科2001年；怀特2013年，2014年；库珀2016年)。有些人甚至强化了系统性肥胖恐惧症；例如，酷儿学者劳伦·伯兰特将肥胖与过度消费混为一谈，支持对胖子的分类刻板印象。同样，酷儿历史学家在他们的分析中很少考虑肥胖的交叉性。英国文学学者Elena Levy-Navarro对酷儿肥胖史的研究提供了对肥胖史如何作为酷儿的最实质性的见解(Levy-Navarro，2009)。她认为，规范身份的特权损害了非规范身份的特权，这一点主导了历史。因此，颠覆历史就是“开始发现过去和现在之间的不同关系”，允许发展另一种使主导话语复杂化的历史。将脂肪解放的历史作为另一种历史来考察，创造了一个框架，在这个框架内，关于脂肪的霸权思想被打破或怪异。当前史学对脂肪历史的遗漏在于，人们认为脂肪身体是可变的和暂时的。胖子没有历史，因为他们现在被认为是没有未来的。肥胖的生活很少被写下来或被记录下来，因为肥胖的生活被认为不值得过。“肥胖症流行”的主要论调非常有效地将肥胖者的未来框定为以减肥为条件。因此，肥胖史仅限于节食史、BMI史、疾病史；因为只有当肥胖的身体被归类为肥胖者时，瘦的身体才配得上未来或过去。在普通人群中培养的这些反肥胖态度继续形成了关于肥胖人群和治疗肥胖人群的公共政策，进一步加强了耻辱和压迫。历史意识为我们挑战系统性压迫提供了最伟大的机制之一。通过阐明英国肥胖解放的起源，我希望它将挑战当代的反肥胖，同时丰富肥胖和古怪的历史学。正如酷儿理论家李·埃德尔曼所主张的那样，“酷儿永远不能定义一种身份；它只会扰乱一个人”。从这个意义上说，我的项目将尽可能地令人不安。

Abstract My project explores the origins of fat liberation in the UK. Using a mixture of textual, material, and oral history sources, I utilise a queer theoretical framework to analyse and interpret the history of fat activism in Britain which arguably reached its apotheosis with the National Fat Women's Conference of 1989 (NFWC). The conference itself and the group who convened it, the London Fat Women's Group (LFWG), have been neglected in queer and feminist histories of the UK. My research aims to correct this imbalance and enriches the current histories of queer and feminist activism in the UK by analysing fatness as a queer disruption of heteronormativity.Research Context, Aims, and BenefitsMy research examines histories of fatness and fat liberation in Britain from the mid to late twentieth century. It builds on my MA Queer History dissertation, currently deposited at the Bishopsgate Institute, which situated the National Fat Women's Conference within the greater historical context of queer history in Britain in the 1970s-1980s. My PhD research expands spatially and temporally to show how fat and queer activism in the UK combatted systemic anti-fatness both before and after the NFWC. In doing so, it elucidates the intersections of queer and fat history which are too often treated as mutually exclusive.While academic work considering fat intersectionality is growing, the vast majority of this work has been conducted in disciplines other than history (. Additionally, scholars of fat history rarely take queerness or queer theory into account (Rensenbrink 2010; Simic 2015; Strings 2019). Academics queering fatness may historically contextualise their arguments, but they are not historians (Lebesco 2001; White 2013, 2014; Cooper 2016). Some even reinforce systemic fatphobia; for example queer scholar Lauren Berlant's conflation of fatness with overconsumption which upholds classist stereotypes about fat people. Likewise, queer historians rarely consider fat intersectionality in their analyses. English literature scholar Elena Levy-Navarro's work on queering fat history offers one of the most substantial insights into how fat histories operate as queer (Levy-Navarro 2009). She argues that the privileging of normative identities to the detriment of non-normative ones has dominated history. To queer history then is to "begin to discover different relationships between the past and the present" allowing for the development of alternative histories which complicate dominant discourses. Examining histories of fat liberation as alternative histories creates a framework within which hegemonic ideas about fat are disrupted, or queered.This omission of fat histories from current historiography lies in the perception of the fat body as mutable and temporary. Fat people do not have histories because they are perceived in the present as having no futures. Fat lives are seldom written about or documented because a fat life is viewed as not worth living. The dominant rhetoric of the "obesity epidemic" has been extremely effective in framing the futures of fat people as being contingent on weight loss. Histories of fat are therefore circumscribed to histories of dieting, of BMI, of disease; for only when the fat body is relegated to an obese "before" is the thin "after" worthy of either a future or a past. The cultivation of these anti-fat attitudes in the general population go on to shape public policy about and treatment of fat people, further reinforcing stigma and oppression. Historical consciousness provides one of the greatest mechanisms we have for challenging systemic oppression. By illuminating the origins of fat liberation in Britain, my hope is that it will challenge contemporary anti-fatness as much as it enriches fat and queer historiography. As queer theorist Lee Edelman argues, "queerness can never define an identity; it can only ever disturb one". In that sense, my project will be as disturbing as possible.