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ABSTRACT
Thinking through the concept of “seeing as touching” as articulated in the work of Laura Marks, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and queer filmmaker Barbara Hammer, this article uses a research-creation approach involving somatic and visual prompts to explore questions around intimacy, visuality, touch, and distance. Building on the concepts of desirability hierarchies and economies of care, it investigates connections between fatphobia and feelings of desire and disgust, highlighting the complex role that sensations can play in reproducing and reinforcing normative body standards and white supremacist power structures. The article includes still photographs from a video-based exploration of a fat “haptic visuality” and suggests a connection between the generative ambiguity such an approach to making images can allow for and the inherent transgressive potential of fat embodiment.
Acknowledgments
I am very grateful for the experiences and conversations that inspired this text, in particular to Dr. Gillie Kleiman and the participants of the LADA London Fat Performance DIY, to Sofia Apostolidou, and to Maia Brown. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their generous comments.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Magdalena Hutter
Magdalena Hutter is a PhD student in the Humanities at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia University in Montreal/Tio’tia:ke, Canada. She does research-creation about the representation and performance of fatness in dance and movement art with a special focus on screendance. Her professional background is in documentary filmmaking, cinematography, and photography.