ABSTRACT
Thickening Fat: Fat Bodies, Intersectionality, and Social Justice seeks to explore the multiple, variable, and embodied experiences of fat oppression and fat activisms. Moving beyond an analysis of fat oppression as singular, this book will aim to unpack the volatility of fat—the mutability of fat embodiments as they correlate with other embodied subjectivities, and the threshold where fat begins to be reviled, celebrated, or amended. In addition, Thickening Fat explores the full range of intersectional and liminal analyses that push beyond the simple addition of two or more subjectivities, looking instead at the complex alchemy of layered and unstable markers of difference and privilege.
Cognizant that the concept of intersectionality has been filled out in a plurality of ways, Thickening Fat poses critical questions around how to render analysis of fatness intersectional and to thicken up intersectionality, where intersectionality is attenuated to the shifting and composite and material dimensions to identity, rather than reduced to an “add difference and stir” approach. The chapters in this collection ask what happens when we operationalize intersectionality in fat scholarship and politics, and we position difference at the centre and start of inquiry.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|2 pages
Our Heavy Inheritance
chapter 4|13 pages
“May My Children Always Have Milk and Rice”
part II|2 pages
Exploding Our Expectations
chapter 7|7 pages
Taking Up Space in the Doctor’s Office
chapter 8|13 pages
“You’re Just Another Friggin’ Number to Add to the Problem”
chapter 10|15 pages
Medicalization, Maternity, and the Materiality of Resistance
part III|2 pages
Expanding Our Activisms
chapter 13|11 pages
Thick Sistahs and Heavy Disprivilege
part IV|2 pages
Our Gainful Failures