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

骚乱而非节食：二十世纪英国脂肪运动的怪异历史

• 批准号: 2607177
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Goldsmiths University of London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2607177
• 关键词: RIOTS; DIETS; QUEER; HISTORY; FAT

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.

我的项目探索了英国脂肪解放的起源。使用混合的文本，材料和口述历史的来源，我利用一个奇怪的理论框架来分析和解释在英国的脂肪激进主义的历史，可以说达到了它的神化与全国胖妇女的会议，1989年（NFWC）。会议本身和召集它的团体，伦敦胖女人团体（LFWG），在英国的酷儿和女权主义历史中被忽视了。我的研究旨在纠正这种不平衡和丰富的酷儿和女权主义活动在英国的当前历史分析肥胖作为一个奇怪的中断heteronormativity.Research上下文，目的和BenefitsMy研究探讨肥胖和脂肪解放的历史在英国从中期到后期的二十世纪。它建立在我的MA酷儿历史论文的基础上，目前存放在主教门研究所，该研究所将全国胖女人会议置于20世纪70年代至80年代英国酷儿历史的更大历史背景下。我的博士研究在空间和时间上扩展，以展示英国的脂肪和酷儿行动主义如何在NFWC之前和之后对抗系统性抗脂肪。在这样做的时候，它阐明了酷儿和肥胖历史的交叉点，这些交叉点往往被视为相互排斥的。虽然考虑肥胖交叉性的学术工作正在增加，但绝大多数工作都是在历史学以外的学科中进行的。此外，研究肥胖史的学者很少考虑酷儿或酷儿理论（Rensenbrink 2010; Simic 2015; Strings 2019）。学者们对肥胖的质疑可能会将他们的论点置于历史背景中，但他们不是历史学家（Lebesco 2001;白色2013，2014;库珀2016）。有些甚至强化了系统性的肥胖恐惧症;例如，酷儿学者劳伦·伯兰特（Lauren Berlant）将肥胖与过度消费混为一谈，坚持了对肥胖者的阶级刻板印象。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。英国文学学者埃琳娜·利维-纳瓦罗（Elena Levy-Navarro）关于肥胖史的研究为肥胖史如何作为酷儿运作提供了最重要的见解之一（Levy-Navarro 2009）。她认为，规范性身份的破坏非规范性身份已经主导了历史。因此，对酷儿历史来说，就是“开始发现过去和现在之间的不同关系”，允许发展使主导话语复杂化的替代历史。把脂肪解放的历史当作另类历史来考察，这就创造了一个框架，在这个框架内，关于脂肪的霸权观念被打乱了，或者说被扭曲了。当前的历史学之所以遗漏了脂肪历史，是因为人们认为脂肪身体是可变的和暂时的。胖人没有历史，因为他们在现在被认为没有未来。肥胖的生活很少被写下来或记录下来，因为肥胖的生活被认为是不值得过的。“肥胖流行病”的主流论调在将肥胖者的未来框定为取决于减肥方面极其有效。因此，肥胖的历史被限制在节食、体重指数和疾病的历史中;因为只有当肥胖的身体被归入肥胖的“之前”时，瘦的“之后”才配得上未来或过去。这些反肥胖态度在普通人群中的培养继续塑造关于肥胖者的公共政策和治疗，进一步加强了耻辱和压迫。历史意识提供了我们挑战系统性压迫的最伟大机制之一。通过阐明英国肥胖解放运动的起源，我希望它能挑战当代的反肥胖运动，同时丰富肥胖和同性恋史学。正如酷儿理论家李·埃德尔曼（Lee Edelman）所说，“酷儿永远不能定义一个身份;它只能扰乱一个人”。从这个意义上说，我的项目将尽可能令人不安。