Becoming Abject: The affective presence of the obese body in schools

1. Becoming Abject: The affective presence of the obese body in schools Dr Emma Rich, Professor John Evans and Laura De Pian ESRC SEMINAR SERIES: Fat Studies and Health at Every Size

2. A Deleuzian analysis of affects and bodies offers new perspectives because it focuses not on what affects or bodies mean but on what they do: what connections they do (or do not) permit, what enables teachers and students to feel, to desire, to have disappointments and fulfillments. (Zembylas, 2007: 28) • See also Leahy (2009) • There is a body circulating in schools……

3. New health imperatives in schools (Rich, et al 2009) • Walkerdine (2009, 201) suggests that if we are to develop this critical work on biopolitical issues on weight and obesity then we need be cautious about invoking a simple ‘relation between the effectivity of biopower and the subject working on the self, or resisting’ • Better understand the complexities of bodies in school contexts, avoid oppositional theory which sees knowledge and bodies as separate entities • Relations between – explore bodies as ‘becoming’

4. Looking at the relational • Avoiding mapping young people’s embodied identities and health knowledge ‘onto a prior distinction between subjects and objects’ (Coleman, 2010: 164). • Thus, rather than implying a causal effect of obesity knowledge on bodies, we examine this as constituted through relationality.

5. Research • The impact of new health imperatives on schools funded by the ESRC (RES-000-22-2003) • Impact of health imperatives on practices and identities of teachers and young people • Focus on the interrelationships between sites of learning about new health imperatives • 8 schools in middle England • Survey – 1176 questionnaires, pupils 9-16 years • Qualitative interviews 90 pupils 19 staff

6. The Circulation of the abject fat body • The body conceived of as a machinic assemblage becomes a body that is multiple. Its function or meaning no longer depends on an interior truth or identity, but on the particular assemblages it forms with other bodies. (Malins, 2004: 84).

7. Anti-Obesity Surveillant Assemblage (Rich et al, 2009) • draws on Haggerty and Ericson’s (2000) notion of the ‘surveillant assemblage’ in identifying an ‘obesity surveillant assemblage’ • The introduction of the assemblage recasts attention towards the multiplicity and temporal moments of interdependence through which surveillance is assembled and bodies ‘become’.

8. ‘New Health Imperatives’ in Schools Fingerprint screening to monitor canteen purchases Measurement and regulation of children’s bodies Skinfold Measurements Moral commentary on children’s bodies National Child Measurement programme Banning of drinks/snacks Lunch Box Inspections Body Mass Index / Weighing Pedometers

9. Many of these practices were underpinned by the presence of images of the fat body as diseased, risky and in need of being ‘controlled’: • this is a lifetime and if you get it wrong for the rest of your life and if you choose to, then you’ve got nobody to blame but yourself when you cut your life short. I’m not the most PC person in the world. (Pamela, food technology teacher)

10. Malins (2004, 97) argues that ‘a body, substance or action can no longer be thought of as being bad, but as only becoming bad–or good–in relation to the specific assemblage it forms with other bodies and the specific affects it enables’ (Malins, 2004, 97). • The fat body is not a pre-existing entity – it becomes multiple things as it connects through assemblages

11. Bodies produced in relation to obese body • I point out to the children if you go back 15 years in China, it wasn’t Westernised, there were no fast food restaurants or anything like that. There were no children in China who were obese and now there are loads of little fat Chinese because they’ve adopted our Western habits and it’s not good for you. So yes they are aware they stand a better chance of not being healthy unless they do something about it. (Pamela, Food technology teacher, school H).

12. Well with matron herself I don’t mind it it’s when you get out of the medial roomy place and everyone goes ‘oh I’ve lost two kilograms blah blah blah blah’ and you’re thinking ‘oh, I’ve gained five’. With matron herself if she says ‘you’ve put on two kilograms’ I won’t be that bothered because I just think it’s my body changing or ok maybe I ate loads this lunchtime’. It’s just when you go outside and everyone wants to know and everyone wants to compare - it gets a bit too competitive (G-11-02b)

13. Sarah (Head of Personal Development) : Yeah, I’ve got two [big] boys in my form.. • Jim (Head of PE) : I was going to mention something about that. • Sarah: Who do diaries with me at the moment - one of them particularly whose family aren’t particularly big, you know, came directly and said I am concerned and they spoke with Jim I think about that, so we suggested a food diary and we’re going to look at that. They can talk to our school nurse as well and we can maybe devise, to look at exercise – they both do a fair amount of exercise.

14. Affective limitations • ‘a body affects other bodies, or is affected by other bodies; it is this capacity for affecting and being affected that also defines a body in its individuality’ (Deleuze, 1992: 625).

15. … Will I die because I’m overweight and you won’t get any sleep because you’ll be thinking about will I die or not. Some people don’t sleep at all because they think that they’re going to die in their sleep because they’re so obese (Marie) • When I think about weight I have dreams yeah, like I become really fat and I can’t move. (R-B5-01)

16. Yeah my teacher told me to stay healthy because if you are overweight people won’t be your friend and they’ll like be mean to you. (Salina, Year 5, R) • ‘affect amplification makes us care about things’ (Probyn, 2004: 26)

17. Yes, I find that if you make it quite graphic they actually listen, you know your body can only get the goodness out of the foods that you put in it. The other thing that we impress upon them is that it’s not enough to do that on its own, it needs to be in conjunction with exercise. Couch potato lifestyles are really, really bad. I won’t expand very much because I’m not terribly PC (Pamela, Food technology, H)

18. RES: Erm, when we had the healthy week we actually had a lady to … who came in and spoke to the children about healthy eating and about why it’s good to eat fruit and she actually showed them what happens if you keep on eating fatty foods and how much fat is stored so … • INT1: What did she show them? • RES: She showed them like, erm, the equivalent of a packet of crisps, she showed them in fat and things, how much it would look like. • INT1: Oh right, okay. • RES: So … • INT1: And how did the children respond to that? • RES: They thought it was disgusting. I think it put them off slightly.

19. I wouldn’t like it because I watch Newsround, it’s a CBBC channel and it said that people who are obese can’t do as much exercise cause they have to move more muscles because they’re overweight and they’ve got more weight to move. I like doing sport so I wouldn’t really like it. And I’d get stared at (Rebecca, Year 5, W)

20. That it [obesity] has risen in the country and that lots more people are obesed (Sarah, year 8, G) • I think that it shows that someone’s measuring themselves and they’re quite concerned and it’s just disgusting a little bit… yeah and it’s overflowing … I think if you want to like make people stop it, because some people find it really hard and like you can’t do it, but if you want to make them stop I think you should show 'em really scary stories because that’s what made me think. Because you look at it and you think ‘oh my God’. (Molly, H, year 7)

21. Jack: He just looks too overweight and how his belly’s dangling down over his trousers (H-P8-01) • Amy: Really difficult and embarrassing, ‘cause you would be ashamed of yourself

22. M: I wouldn’t like to walk around, like really fat • A: I think the hardest thing would be actually trying to exercise, ‘cause say when you were swimming all your blubber would go everywhere • TB: All your what would go everywhere? A: Blubber M: Yeah it would wobble around and it would go wrinkly • A: I think everything would be so much more hard work

23. Affective reactions • We need to attend to what Probyn (2004: 29) calls the ‘goose bump effect’, ‘– that moment when a text sets off a frisson of feelings, remembrances, thoughts, and the bodily actions that accompany them’. • Anger • Anxiety • Guilt • Pity • Shame • Disgust • Fear • Horror • Abjection • Repulsion

24. Limiting relations with others/ become-other • And they get pushed around and no-one wants to be friends with them and no-one wants to meet them (Ingrid, Year 5, F) • And everyone makes fun of you, you don’t usually get any friends. (Marie, Year 6, F)

25. Conclusion • Accompanying the proliferation of health imperatives and practices in schools are a range of affective reactions experienced by young people, and an extension of what becomes sayable about bodies in classroom environments. • Part of our task as pedagogues may be to help students ‘acknowledge and work with the affective reaction’ (Probyn, 2004: 30) they have to particular bodies – including images circulating within popular culture, actual bodies in schools, but also bodies which may circulate as a sort of invisible but pervasive presence (the obese body which one might always become).