Fat Activism: A Queer Autoethnography Charlotte Rachel Mary Cooper BA(Hons) PGCert PGDip MA MBACP PhD University of Limerick Supervisor: Dr Lee F. Monaghan Submitted to the University of Limerick, December 2012 2 Table of contents ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................................. 5 DECLARATION ...................................................................................................................................... 7 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................................ 9 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................................... 11 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 13 SIMPLICITY, COMPLEXITY AND THE KILLJOY ................................................................................................... 15 WHY THIS STUDY MATTERS ............................................................................................................................... 20 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS ................................................................................................................................ 21 CHAPTER TWO: FAT ACTIVIST LITERATURE .......................................................................... 25 GO CHUB CRAZY WITH THE CHUBSTERS! ...................................................................................................... 25 EXPLANATORY LITERATURE .............................................................................................................................. 28 Popular fat activism ...................................................................................................................................... 28 Fragmented fat activism ............................................................................................................................. 31 Feminist proxies for fat activism .............................................................................................................. 32 Disengaged fat activism ............................................................................................................................... 35 CRITICAL LITERATURE ........................................................................................................................................ 39 Marginalised fat activism ........................................................................................................................... 40 The threat of fat activism ............................................................................................................................ 43 Using obesity to explain fat activism ...................................................................................................... 44 Fat activism that fails ................................................................................................................................... 47 LOCATING THE THESIS ........................................................................................................................................ 51 What is fat activism? ..................................................................................................................................... 52 Where is my fat activism discursively located? ................................................................................. 54 How can fat activism be theorised productively? ............................................................................. 56 CONCLUSION: MY CONTRIBUTION TO THE LITERATURE ............................................................................... 62 CHAPTER THREE: FAT ACTIVIST METHODOLOGY ................................................................ 65 CONTEXTUALISING FAT ACTIVIST RESEARCH ................................................................................................. 66 Researching obesity ....................................................................................................................................... 66 Who is allowed to know about fat? ......................................................................................................... 67 Research justice ............................................................................................................................................... 69 REFLEXIVITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY ................................................................................................................ 71 Who am I to do this work? .......................................................................................................................... 71 Why who I am matters ................................................................................................................................. 73 CUSTOMISING QUALITATIVE METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................. 75 Critical ethnography ..................................................................................................................................... 75 Autoethnography ............................................................................................................................................ 77 Queering and scavenging autoethnography ...................................................................................... 81 THE FIELD ............................................................................................................................................................. 82 The archive as autoethnographic field ................................................................................................. 83 DOING QUEERED AND SCAVENGED AUTOETHNOGRAPHY ............................................................................. 85 Being an activist .............................................................................................................................................. 86 Generating data .............................................................................................................................................. 88 Access ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 90 Sampling ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 91 Interviewing .................................................................................................................................................................................. 93 Data analysis ................................................................................................................................................................................. 95 Ethics and Quality .......................................................................................................................................... 95 Methodological limitations ........................................................................................................................ 96 CONCLUSION: RESEARCH ACTIVISM .................................................................................................................. 98 3 CHAPTER FOUR: WHAT IS FAT ACTIVISM? ............................................................................ 101 POLITICAL PROCESS .......................................................................................................................................... 103 Defining ............................................................................................................................................................ 103 The appeal of political process .............................................................................................................. 105 Limitations ..................................................................................................................................................... 107 ACTIVIST COMMUNITIES AND CULTURES ...................................................................................................... 112 What is community? ................................................................................................................................... 112 Community-building and capital .......................................................................................................... 113 Using community to generate cultural capital ............................................................................... 119 Existing cultural forMs .......................................................................................................................................................... 119 New cultural forMs ................................................................................................................................................................. 123 MICRO FAT ACTIVISM ........................................................................................................................................ 126 AMBIGUOUS FAT ACTIVISM .............................................................................................................................