ABSTRACT
This chapter describes health as a background state that permits extension in the world and with others. It draws attention to how virtual elements of our situation, including our imagined futures, color both health and illness, and shapes how to extend into the world. The chapter considers the case of obesity as an example that is often understood as a condition that limits extension in the world; however, in order to understand such limitations, It argues that one must consider the cultural manner in which obesity is understood and situated in order to move from a phenomenology of health and illness to a critical phenomenology which expands beyond the individual situation to the complexity of our social situation. Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion of critical disability theory where disability is understood not as a matter of individual bodies, but a matter of the way in which those bodies are constituted in our society.
