Debriefing Fat Studies: A Critical Dialogue

The Fat Studies: A Critical Dialogue conference has just wrapped in Sydney and I've got a few things to say about it.

Giving a keynote on the other side of the world to the place where you live, amongst people you barely know, at an event which has been highly anticipated for ages, where your past and your future are available for critique; well, it's amazing to be asked to do this but it's also stressful. Who knew?! I have nothing to add about this, just that, for me, it turned out to be a somewhat kinky mixture of deep pleasure and high anxiety, and I felt quite discombobulated as a result.

It was a joke at the conference that I dislike it when fannishness is directed towards me, but it's not really a joke to me. A fannish encounter is different to one where you approach each other as equal humans, because it's a bit strange and shallow and never goes anywhere. I think it makes divisions rather than builds alliances and I experience it as dehumanising and alienating, it's not the honour it's supposed to be. So I struggled with that aspect. Anything you say makes it worse, like "how sweet, she's being modest", and of course it's all tied up with ego and I hate that too, ugh! I love it when people want to talk to me about my work or activism, or whatever, but I can do without these awkward meetings. Man up, people! Cut it out!

Now that's out of the way, here are a bunch of things about the conference that I thought were very special, in no particular order:

1. I heard that Judy Freespirit had died on the morning that I was due to deliver my presentation. I met her in San Francisco this summer, interviewed her, and studied her powerful archives at the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society. She was a hero to me, one of the most persuasive voices when I first encountered fat politics. I am so lucky that I got to meet her and tell her what her work meant to me. Shortly before I left the UK to come to Australia, I wrote and told her that I was going to dedicate my keynote to her. Unfortunately this turned out to be a posthumous dedication, but I'm glad that she probably knew that her work had helped spark this other work so far away from home in time and space.

Sam Murray, who organised the conference, opened the second day with an acknowledgement of Judy's death and a reading off The Fat Liberation Manifesto that Judy co-authored with Aldebaran. God, that work is powerful. A spooky thing happened: Judy's name was mentioned at the same time the computer being used for presentations switched on with, I don't know, whatever that start-up chime is. As an atheist I don't believe in such things, but it was sweet to imagine that the sound was announcing Judy's spiritual presence in the room, it was lovely.

2. Blessings upon Rachael Kendrick for daring to grapple with Foresight's Obesity Systems Map. She entered the Looking-Glass world of high level obesity policy theorists and lived to tell the tale. There were cackles from my side of the room.

3. I thought it was a great idea to have the art exhibition and performance evening, Bodies Abound. This kind of creative, cultural, community-based cross-pollination is the lifeblood of fat activism. Even better was that the event was rammed with people, there with gorgeous free food and wine too.

4. I nipped out of a presentation panel to go to the toilet and walked past all the seminar and meeting rooms. The doors were open and I could hear all these conversations happening at once, people listening and talking and – blub! – speaking truth to power, in their way. It was so beautiful and seemed to exemplify what the conference is about, that is, trying to create a dialogue across interdisciplinary boundaries.

5. I had my own taste of this a few times. It was really interesting to talk to people who had what I think of as unquestioned obesity scholarship. These people were a bit old school in terms of Fat Studies, and this is understandable because Fat Studies is not well known, and people are in the grip of rhetoric around obesity. In some cases people seemed unable to challenge what I might call fatphobic obesity discourse, yet they were also able to adopt new concepts. I think this ability to maintain two ways of thinking simultaneously is fascinating, it's a bit like Orwellian doublethink. It makes me wonder if they will relinquish older ways of thinking, or if they're more likely to create a synthesis of the two. Perhaps such allegedly polarised discourse will morph into something else.

6. I had the good luck to witness Maria Giannacopoulos' paper 'Disease and the Colony,' about colonialism in indigenous cultures in Australia. One of the themes on the paper was about how colonisers had forced nutritionally poor food on indigenous people and how this demographic were suffering as a result. Some of the conversation that followed was about how 'bad' food could be replaced with 'good' food. I knew that this was problematic from my point of view as someone who is part of a group for whom these decisions are being made at policy level. I decided to go with the interdisciplinary theme and speak up. I wasn't understood at first when I said that swapping bad food for good maintained colonialist surveillance practises, but an intervention by the skilful panel chair who spotted another theme in the paper enabled us to bridge the gap: we all understood that indigenous people are sovereign and thus should be able to make their own choices about what they eat. This was a small point, but it was a wonderful, powerful experience for us all to understand and respect each other across our diverse perspectives. Wowie!

7. What I loved about Cleo Gardiner's 'Borderline Sexy: Erotica, Sex and the Geography of a Fat Chick’s Body in Performance' was how she talked about her own body and sexuality. It gave me permission to speak about my own. I don't necessarily need permission to do this but, at a conference that's somewhat located within academia, it's great to be reminded that these are legitimate areas for discussion.

8. There were many newbies at the conference, by which I mean people who have just recently encountered critical fat perspectives. Some of the narratives aired were very familiar to me, I've heard them many times and I can be quite impatient with them. The conference reminded me of the power of these transformative ideas that are real and meaningful to those expressing them. I was moved by the tenderness with which people spoke, especially in the Fat Femme Front panel, and delighted by the ways in which they are integrating these concepts into other parts of theor personal and political lives.

9. Feeling confident in my own scholarship, feeling inspired by new ideas and glad to be part of an exciting social movement. I can't say much more about this now because I'm overwhelmed, but it'll probably percolate out over the next few months or so. Short version: what an experience! So good and so rich.

10. Sam Murray is amazing, has fucking great politics, is a perpetual delight to be around, looks good in a frock, can organise a conference and is as brainy as hell. Dynamite combo, dynamite gal. This conference is what Fat Studies can be, watch and learn.

I took no pictures, sorry about that, but they're bound to arise somehow and somewhere. Want more? Take a look at #sydfatconf on Twitter and FatDialogue.com

PS Drop me a line if you'd like to read my notes, look at my slides, or listen to an audio recording of the presentation.