TRANSFORMATIONAL PEDAGOGIES OF THE ABJECT BODY: An Argument for Radical Fat Pedagogies

This chapter examines fat studies——or, possibly, radical fat studies——as an interdisciplinary collaborator with disability studies, trans studies, queer studies, and “freak” studies in order to examine how radical fat studies might situate fatness as embracing the margins and the fringes It argues that fat studies at its core is staunchly anti-assimilationist and that, much like its intellectual allies mentioned earlier, could benefit from recognizing this resistant identity more fully, particularly on the ground with students in different critical classrooms. The chapter looks pedagogical practices of teaching fat studies alongside queer anti-assimilationist work, trans writing about embracing the “freak” body, and queer crip theories of working within abjection. It traces the pedagogical work with students in the course Abject Bodies and the Politics of Trash to imagine a space for fatness as an outlaw/outsider status. A crucial overlap between radical fat studies and queer anti-assimilationism gives insight into the toxicity of striving for assimilation.