Foucault Goes to Weight Watchers

Kritiske perspektiver i helsefagene: Utdanning, yrkespraksis og forskning

“…I stedet for å forstå makt som en kraft som kuer og skaper lydige pasienter, kan man argumentere med at det gjennom maktuttrykket i dette kurset ble skapt muligheter for deltakerne, ved at man søkte å sette dem i stand til å håndtere sin situasjon på en bedre måte (jf. Heyes, 2006). Dette kan forstås som en selvteknologi, som innebaerer at individet laerer å styre seg selv.…”

Becoming Smaller: Autobiographical Spaces of Weight Loss

“…Therefore to think through the slimming and slimmed body I turned to feminist, mainly poststructuralist, accounts in other disciplines. Two contributions I found to be particularly useful are Cressida Heyes (2006) article “Foucault goes to Weight Watchers” and Samantha Murray's (2008) chapter “Fattening up Foucault: a ‘fat’ counter‐aesthetic?” Both authors consider Foucaults’ later work on “care of the self” presented in History of Sexuality, Volume II: The Use of Pleasure (1985) but present a different reading. In arguing for practices of care of the self Foucault suggests that “one might be able to recreate oneself as a ‘work of art’”.…”

“…Heyes writes that some critics of dieting such as Sandra Bartky (1990) and Susan Bordo (1993) suggest that people attempt to lose weight because they act on a false belief that it will improve their health. Other critics influenced by feminism (eg Hesse‐Biber 1996), argues Hayes, suggest that women also diet because we have been “ideologically duped by an oppressive set of beauty ideals” (Heyes 2006:127). Heyes notes that while this account is not “wrong”, it does not speak to the notion that one doesn't just become subjected to disciplinary practices but one can also become a subject .…”

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On the one hand, deliberately losing weight by controlling diet involves the self‐construction of a docile body through attention to the minutest detail. On the other hand, becoming aware of exactly how and what one eats and drinks, realizing that changing old patterns can have embodied effects, or setting a goal and moving toward it, are all enabling acts of self‐transformation (Heyes 2006:128).

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“…In the first section, I situate this research in an area of scholarship known as “fat studies” and in some of the critical geographical scholarship on fat. Following this I outline Cressida Heyes’ (2006) and Samantha Murray's (2008) contrasting feminist readings of Michel Foucualt's notion of “care of the self” developed in his later work (Foucault 1985, 1988). Since the research rests “heavily” on a narration of my own lived experience of a slimmed body, the second section offers a discussion of autobiography as a method of inquiry.…”