Der er en særlig plads i Helvede for dovne børn

This article takes a closer look at the educational computer game Life Calculator (2010) and its attempts to inform young people about health risks and it argues that the game becomes a biopolitical and disciplinary tool. Drawing on the work of Foucault, the article claims that specific bodies are made (im)possible through the game’s strong narrative about Hell, death and health. The article will show how this narrative helps create ’healthy’ and ’liveable’ subject positions (for some) while understandings (of what health is or could be) that differ from the game’s view are stigmatized in the process. Inspired also by Sara Ahmed and her claim that emotions are cultural practices that hold affective power and organize our modes of life, this article is interested in the ways the ‘healthy’ body is understood as tied to life and therefore gets to count as life. The article concludes that health logics are organized and negotiated through a fearsome narrative about the ‘fat’ and ‘unhealthy’ body

Sort. En reparerende læsning af den vrede og tykke (kvinde)krop

Sort. A reparative reading of the angry and fat (female) bodyInstead of a purely aesthetic state or medical condition fat scholar Kathleen LeBesco (2004: 1) suggests considering fatness as performative and a political situation. Based on the novel Sort (2012) by Kamilla Hega Holst this article examines and discusses LeBesco’s thesis; that the fat body by virtue of its culturally created position as ‘deviant’ and ‘abnormal’ holds a special ability to evoke ‘terror’ and disturb social order. Through both reparative and paranoid readings, and by applying Sara Ahmed’s figure The Feminist Killjoy as well as Lee Edelman’s conceptualization of queer futurism, the possibility of reading the novel’s fat protagonist as a queer character who actively and consciously resists social demands for a happy future is considered. Furthermore, ‘the body as battleground’, agency, as well as the fat body’s potential to oppose normalizing practices of embodiment is discussed

Embodied Practices of Prosthesis

While the prosthesis is often thought of as a technology or an artefact used to ‘fix’ or make ‘whole’ a disabled body, it has also become an important figuration and metaphor for thinking about disabled embodiment as an emblematic manifestation of bodily difference and mobility. Furthermore, the ambiguity and broadness of prosthesis as an object and a concept, as well as its potential as a theoretical and analytical thinking tool, show up in widely different areas of popular culture, art and academic scholarship. In this article, we explore the opportunities of the ways in which prosthesis might be a helpful and productive fi gure in relation to framing, analyzing and understanding certain healthcare-related practices that are not traditionally associated with disability. Our aim is to suggest new ways of building onto the idea of the performative value of the prosthetic fi gure and its logics as a continuum through which very different forms of embodied practices could be meaningfully understood and analyzed. Thus, we argue that the logic of the prosthesis can be helpful in uncovering tensions related to idealistic and dominant ideas about health and embodiment. First, we engage with the theoretical discussions from cultural studies, including critical disability studies, in which we broaden the scope of the concept of prosthesis. Second, we introduce and discuss two illustrative case examples in the form of dance therapeutic practices for people with Parkinson’s disease and group therapeutic practices in male-friendly spaces. In doing so, we seek to raise new questions about the ongoing cultivation of bodily and health-related interventions through the lens of the prosthetic spectrum, which we have labelled embodied practices of prosthesis

Fat studies – et felt, der vokser

Formålet med denne artikel er at introducere læseren til det voksende akademiske felt fat studies ved at gennemgå en håndfuld af de udviklinger og diskussioner, der har hjulpet til at forme dette nye akademiske felt i opposition til traditionel biomedicinsk «fedmeforskning». Selvom artiklen ikke er udtømmende, kan den forhåbentlig tjene som en introduktion og en hjælpende hånd med hensyn til at lokalisere yderligere litteratur til den interesserede læser. Herudover beskriver og diskuterer artiklen tre teoretiske strømninger, der har været særlig vigtige for dette nye forskningsområde (feministisk, queer- og kritisk handicapteori)