(Dis)embodying fat bodies: Erasure and resistance in cyberspace and the classroom

Abstract

Dominant anti-fat narratives written into and by the medical field, fashion, in virtual spaces, and the physical spaces we inhabit have disembodied fat people in their own stories, not allowing fat bodies space to write themselves. Just because that space has not been allowed, though, does not mean it cannot be made. This dissertation will look at how that space has and can be made. The field of fat studies has been growing, both in general and within rhetoric and composition. This dissertation will add to this conversation by focusing on making space for fat bodies to write themselves. I will begin by viewing classroom furniture through the lens of critical posthumanism. As part of Foucault's 'learning machine,' this furniture is designed to help separate students into discrete, interchangeable units. I will argue that this has an especially negative effect on fat bodies but also negatively affects the classroom as a whole, creating resistance across connections within the classroom. Next, I will examine avatar creation programs in virtual worlds, where fat bodies are treated as non-default, designing fat bodies can be cumbersome, and in some cases, fat bodies do not exist at all. After that, I will look at how fat bodies have been decomposed by anti-fat PSAs and how women making up what I call Fat Instagram have been using their bodies to recompose their bodies. I will propose a design ethic that forwards identity and inclusion to help with this and similar problems. I will end by discussing how this work informs pedagogy and propose a course that forwards identity, the rhetoric of online movements, and the interplay between bodies and space while including students on the design end of the course.