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

Abstract

Sort. A reparative reading of the angry and fat (female) body
Instead 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.