Embodied transformations and food restrictions: The case of medicalized obesity

Abstract

Weight loss surgery that mechanically restricts consumers' bodies to limit their food intake is booming in a context of globesity (World Health Organization). Based on a Foucauldian analysis, this study contends that self-transformative experiences arise from normalizing practices that the advocates of a repressive medical bio power overlook. This article problematizes the idea of resistance and normativity by emphasizing the existence of various forms of agency, not all of which are predicated on the term of resistance. The author proposes ‘embodied transformation’ as escaping docile embodiment versus embodied resistance (the negative view of subjectification as subjecting) to tell of normalizing practices that become a locus of discovery of creative potentialities within restrictive contexts. The study detects two types of agency. Consumers' discourses are driven by a temporal or narrative structure vs. a spatial or connective form of becoming.