The Tipping of the Big Stone-And Life itself. Obesity, Moral Work and Responsive Selves Over Time.

Abstract

Why is "everything I know is the right thing to do a million miles removed from what I do in reality?" This question posed by Rita, my main interlocutor and friend in a fieldwork that started in 2001-2003 and was taken up again in 2014-2015, opens up an exploration of moral work and moral selves in the context of the obesity epidemic and weight loss processes. I address these questions through the notion of "moral laboratories" taking up Mattingly's argument that moral cultivation over time cannot be disconnected from a notion of self. Mattingly has consistently argued for a biographical and narrative self, which is processual and created in community. Along these lines, and by recourse to the German philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels' phenomenology, I will propose the notion of a responsive self. The responsive self highlights the eventness of ongoing experimentation against the odds and captures equally pathic and agentive dimensions of a self that both persists and is transformed over time.