The<i>jouissance</i>of the Lard(er): Gender, desire and anxiety in the weight-loss industry

Dickson, Andrew

doi:10.1080/14759551.2011.590307

Cited by 15 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…My purpose in this paper is to demonstrate how the ‘feminine’ writing of organizations can be seen as an attempt to harness what Jacques Lacan calls the Other's jouissance (Lacan, ; see also Dickson, for a theorization of the ‘nature’ and ‘types’ of jouissance ) through the hysteric's discourse (Fotaki and Harding, ) to disrupt the phallogocentrism that has dominated the field of organization studies. To theorize this, I use an example (or perhaps, an analogy) based on my own (unconscious) harnessing of the jouissance of the Other as an hysterical man ‘Othered’ by the women‐focused weight industry.…”

Section: An Introduction: On Purpose and Method(ology)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, reading Orbach's analysis was a violent encounter; her focus on women was so frustrating; and for me her words continue to be simultaneously compelling and repelling. To me, Orbach is in many ways complicit in the weight industry; although she is clearly a campaigner against the excesses of aspects of this rather horrible industry (Dickson, 2011), the main thesis in Fat is a Feminist Issue revolves around 'fatness' as a social pathology (I certainly get this) and then links this to the plight of women in a misogynist word. Ok, so why is this such an issue for me?…”

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confidence: 99%

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Hysterical Blokes and the Other's Jouissance

Dickson¹

2014

Gender Work & Organization

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This paper represents an attempt to theorize the feminine writing of organization through the Lacanian logic of sexuation. It also represents an attempt by a man to practise the feminine writing of organization. Using autoethnographic methods, I attempt to reformulate the ‘female’ problem of weight anxiety through the eyes of a weight anxious man and thus to provide a radical (re)thinking of gender. By linking a man's experience of weight anxiety to Lacan's hysteric's discourse, I demonstrate how men can experience the Other's jouissance and find themselves ‘on the feminine side’. I then use this logic to argue that the feminine writing of organization is an attempt to harness the Other's jouissance, as author to place oneself as the object of the Other's desire, in other words to become hysterical.

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Section: An Introduction: On Purpose and Method(ology)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Hysterical Blokes and the Other's Jouissance

Dickson¹

2014

Gender Work & Organization

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“…We accept that recognition of this new epistemology will not come from the private sector, where impulse sales and weight anxiety (Dickson, 2011) are a corporate goal. Thus we openly challenge our current public health sector to abandon the dominant, but failing, one-size-fitsall approach.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In New Zealand, and indeed throughout most developed countries, weight-loss is seen as not only entirely reasonable, but in 'fact' the only ethical position that an overweight or obese person can inhabit (Dickson, 2014). This moral frame has achieved sensational success as a discourse in society, spread by the media, the health industry and perhaps more insidiously by the capital goals of the wider diet industry (Dickson, 2011) as they attempt to produce docile consumers. Although Māori are familiar with this moral frame, having been portrayed negatively in media for generations (Burrows, 2009), the impact of weight loss messages has had less attention.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The biopolitics of Māori biomass: towards a new epistemology for Māori health in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Warbrick

Dickson

Prince

et al. 2015

Critical Public Health

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In this paper we consider what impact a biopolitics that creates a compliant self-governing weight-focused population has had on Māori health in Aotearoa/New Zealand. We frame this discussion with three vignettes that in different ways demonstrate the deleterious effects of the individualisation of health on Māori. We argue that the current biopolitics is best explained as 'the health of Maoris' not 'Māori Health'. To counter this current biopolitics we put forward an alternative epistemology, the 'Atua Matua' framework. This epistemology pays respect to a Māori view of health that is holistic, encompassing physical, emotional, spiritual, cultural and familial well-being and does not give ground to the requirement for individualism so prevalent in neoliberalism. 3

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“…Phelan et al, 2014) in the United States found both explicit and implicit weight stigma at similarly high levels as in the general population. Other studies on doctors have supported this finding in the United States (Dickson, 2011;Hebl & Xu, 2001), as well as the United Kingdom (Harvey & Hill, 2001) and Australia (Campbell, Engel, Timperio, Cooper, & Crawford, 2000). Likewise, other health professionals have been reported to show weight stigma, including clinical psychologists (Harvey & Hill, 2001), nurses Poon & Tarrant, 2009), rehabilitation professionals (Wise, Harris, & Olver, 2014) and dieticians .…”

Section: Weight Stigma In Healthcarementioning

confidence: 49%

Weight stigma in health: (re)thinking weight in a physiotherapy context

Setchell¹

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The physiotherapy profession increasingly considers weight management to be part of its scope of practice. Ostensibly this may seem like a good idea: popular media and biomedical discourses highlight a global "obesity epidemic", and physiotherapists, considered "experts in movement", may be well placed to help address obesity by encouraging activity. On the other hand, an excessive focus on weight can have negative consequences. A large body of research now highlights negative attitudes towards those who are overweight (weight stigma) among health professionals, including doctors, nurses, dieticians, psychologists and exercise scientists. Yet, despite the size and impact of the profession, there has been little work exploring weight stigma in the context of physiotherapy.My aims are two-fold. First, I investigate weight-related interactions in physiotherapy, and second, I investigate how weight might be (re)thought in this context. The first three thesis chapters provide a theoretical exploration of concepts relevant to weight in physiotherapy. In the introductory chapter I argue that it is helpful to draw from scholarship in critical psychology and the emerging field of critical physiotherapy. In Chapter 2 I consider traditional social psychological theories that provide a social and embodied understanding of weight stigma. However, I outline how these theories are notably apolitical, acultural, ahistorical and lack mechanisms for understanding power in stigma. To address this issue, I introduce post-structuralist perspectives (particularly those of Michel Foucault) that are often used in critical social science. Using a poststructural psychological lens, I critically examine the literature on weight and its associated stigma.As context specific understandings are desirable, I use Chapter 3 to examine the nature of the physiotherapy profession, to determine what might be relevant to "thinking weight" and considerations of stigma. Here I look in depth at this profession, discussing where power, the body, reflexivity and the profession's ontological underpinnings might be relevant to weight-related physiotherapy interactions.In Chapter 4 I outline the empirical approaches I took to further address the aims of the thesis, and discuss their underlying assumptions. Following this, in Chapters 5 to 7 I present three empirical studies, each of which is published in peer-reviewed journals (or under review). In a previous study (described in Chapter 3) I tested weight stigma in physiotherapists using attitude tests in an online survey. I found that participating physiotherapists held explicit and implicit weight stigmatising attitudes similar to those in related professions. Building on this earlier work, Iconducted an inductive thematic analysis of interviews with patients who had experienced weightrelated interactions with physiotherapists (described in Chapter 5). Participants spoke of perceiving weight stigma in a number of elements of physiotherapy interactions, elements of the physiotherapy environment and...

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Thejouissanceof the Lard(er): Gender, desire and anxiety in the weight-loss industry

Cited by 15 publications

References 20 publications

Hysterical Blokes and the Other's Jouissance

Hysterical Blokes and the Other's Jouissance

The biopolitics of Māori biomass: towards a new epistemology for Māori health in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Weight stigma in health: (re)thinking weight in a physiotherapy context

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