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Racial Biopolitics of Obesity Rachel Sanders a Dissertation The Color of Fat: Racial Biopolitics of Obesity Rachel Sanders A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2013 Committee: Jack Turner, Chair Michael McCann Christine di Stefano Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Department of Political Science © Copyright 2013 Rachel Sanders University of Washington Abstract The Color of Fat: Racial Biopolitics of Obesity Rachel Sanders Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor Jack Turner Department of Political Science This dissertation employs the analytics of biopolitics, critical race theory, and feminist theory to explore the racial and gender dynamics of the political and medical construction of the American ‘obesity epidemic.’ Its two-part structure enables me to critique ‘obesity’ both as a legitimate public health concern whose higher prevalence among minorities is an embodiment of racial injustice and as a problematic construct that serves biopower, gender retrenchment and colorblind white dominance. Chapters 1 and 2 use the Foucauldian optic of biopower in tandem with Agamben’s concept of ‘spaces of exception’ and the work of urban sociologists to analyze segregated urban enclaves as the racially delineated spaces in which biopower, despite its signature commitment to supporting life, represses black life chances. Drawing on epidemiological theories of embodiment and public health research, I argue that higher rates of obesity among American minorities are an embodied outcome of structural racism and should be apprehended as a form of ‘structural violence’ to prompt recognition that the outcomes of structural racism, if not its implements, are physically harmful. Staking a critical distance from the pathologization of fat, Chapter 3 analyzes how the construction of America’s ‘obesity epidemic’ fortifies both biopower and status quo gender arrangements. This construction authorizes a vast ‘assemblage’ of both institutionally bound and individually administered health and lifestyle surveillance programs. I argue that the medical and political promotion of ‘fat panic’ re-enlists women in new self-disciplinary ‘body projects’ that complement regimens already prescribed by what some feminists call the ‘fashion-beauty complex.’ Thus framing obesity as a public health problem not only serves benevolent public health goals but also extends the knowledge-gathering capacity of biopower and aids gender retrenchment. Chapter 4 analyzes political, public health, and cultural discourses that recursively emphasize the higher prevalence of obesity among minorities in general, and among African American and Latina women in particular, as a contemporary ‘racial project.’ I argue that because they play out in a political context marked by the convergence of neoliberalism and ‘the politics of disgust,’ these discourses are constructing a new-but-old ‘controlling image’ of American obesity that harnesses the most deplored traits of the welfare queen. This repurposed stereotype of the insatiable, undisciplined, and freeloading fat black woman serves as a receptacle for white anxiety over the vulnerability of white privilege as obesity rates rise among all racial groups and national anxiety over the ‘tribal stigma’ of fatness as it engulfs the country at large. In its entirety, this project contributes to and builds new connections between multiple disciplines and interdisciplinary fields, namely political theories of biopower, social scientific scholarship on racial inequality, critical race and gender studies, epidemiology and public health, and fat studies. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION THE POLITICAL REALITY OF OBESITY ………………………………………………………………………………….. 1 PART I ~ BIOPOWER AND THE RACIAL CONTOURS OF THE OBESITY EPIDEMIC CHAPTER 1 TO MAKE LIVE OR LET DIE: AMERICAN BIOPOLITICS OF RACIAL DISPARITY ………………………………… 25 Foucault’s genealogy of biopower Biopolitics’ thanatopolitics Biopower’s ‘basic mechanism’: Foucault’s conception of racism Accepting Agamben’s invitation: the American ghetto as biopolitical paradigm Conclusion: racial disparity under the lens of biopower CHAPTER 2 EMBODYING DISPARITY: STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE AND THE RACIAL DEMOGRAPHY OF OBESITY ………… 56 Structural racism as the means of thanatopolitics The racial demography of obesity as embodiment of structural racism Structural violence as the primary mode of thanatopolitics Conclusion: shifting public health and racial justice debates to structural terrain INTERLUDE TOWARD A CRITICAL APPROACH TO OBESITY ……………………………………………………………………… 89 Contesting the pathologization of fat Situating the stigmatization of fat Resignifying fat bodies Biopower’s privileged institutional pillar: the field of public health The political economy of public health and the ‘obesity epidemic’ PART II ~ OBESITY UNDER CRITIQUE CHAPTER 3 INTERROGATING FAT PANIC: BIOPOWER AND THE ‘OBESITY EPIDEMIC’ …………………………………… 110 Constructing pathologies: the medicalization of fat The ‘veritable discursive explosion’ vis-à-vis obesity Fat bodies as the contact points of disciplinary and regulatory technologies Policing ‘risky bodies’: the ‘problematization of the normal’ and the expansion of surveillance Conclusion: the real foci of fat panic CHAPTER 4 COLORING FAT: THE RACIALIZATION OF OBESITY AS A RACIAL PROJECT ………………………………… 147 The racialization of obesity as a refortification of white normativity The racialization of obesity as a stigmatic enterprise The racialization of obesity as engendering a new controlling image of black femininity The predominance of neoliberalism The ‘politics of disgust’ The public identity of the obese American Conclusion: personifying obesity, preserving white dominance CONCLUSION BEYOND OBESITY …………………………………………………………………………………………………… 187 WORKS CITED ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 193 PREFACE I see this project as belonging to a lineage of critical theories that analyze the different ways in which power targets bodies and in which power relations are embodied. It is a reflection of my own interest in the relationship between political and popular cultural discourses and power arrangements, persistent racial and gender disparities in a purportedly post-racial and post-feminist era, a resurgent food politics movement with both progressive and problematic facets, and applications of critical theories to contemporary political problems. My favorite theoretical traditions have engaged me in an ongoing introspection of the ways in which my own body is invested with, complicit in, and literally shaped by power. I navigate life in a highly normativized and self-disciplined body that accrues the benefits of coding as thin, white, and compliant with normative standards of femininity. My first encounters with Nietzsche and Foucault made me fundamentally rethink how my lifelong rigorous exercise and eating regimens render me more docile and compliant with power than independent of it. My sustained engagement with feminist theory reminds me that my aspiration to body and beauty ideals not only hampers me but implicates me in the subjection of other women to the same impossible project and the alienation of those who cannot or refuse to pursue it. My readings of race studies have made me critical of my unearned psychic and material privileges and committed to both symbolic and structural racial justice. My position within multiple social hierarchies and these particular concerns, encounters and reflections all inform this project, and I mean here to put them out front. I am grateful to my dissertation committee members Michael McCann, Christine Di Stefano, and Naomi Murakawa, my GSR Ralina Joseph, and especially to my committee chair Jack Turner, for the time, insight, and guidance each has lent to this project in particular and to my scholarly development in general. Little may they know how deeply I admire their individual work and their commitment to their students. Since our simultaneous arrival at the University of Washington Department of Political Science in Autumn 2007, Jack Turner has been my number one advisor and advocate both within the department and the field at large. He has more than generously offered me personal support, intellectual rapport, and professional opportunities to an extent I cannot possibly reciprocate. Many political theory and Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race doctoral students and faculty members at UW have contributed empathetic and constructive criticism to various iterations of these chapters. In particular Kirstine Taylor, Sarah Dreier, and Annie Menzel have provided invaluable intellectual and extracurricular companionship. I am grateful for two sources of financial support that have enabled my dissertation research and writing at crucial junctures: the Peter J. May Graduate Research Grant in Political Science and the Joff Hanauer Graduate Fellowship for Excellence in Western Civilization. I feel fortunate to have been part of the six-member Hanauer fellowship group during one of the years it was led by John Toews, a gifted scholar and genial discussion facilitator. The Western Political Science Association and the Law and Society Association have provided constructive forums, critics and interlocutors for each chapter in various stages of development. To the UW undergraduates who filled my office hours, endured my verbosity, and contributed the insights that animated my lesson plans, I am thankful. The Sound Mind & Body Gym and I Love Hot Yoga communities have been my third places in Seattle, with
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