Andrew Dickson

The jouissance of the Lard(er): Gender, desire and anxiety in the weight-loss industry

In this paper, I use the Lacanian concept of jouissance to examine how weight-loss industry organisations trade in the desire of anxious weight-loss consumers. The weight-loss industry is rife with ‘new’ knowledge; it seems that every week a story hits the press about the newest way to ‘shed the pounds’. Just as frequently, we see stories of yo-yo dieters who constantly seek new, better ways to lose weight, but fail each time to satisfy their articulated desire. Organisations in the diet industry are profit-driven entities. Like any other organisation, they use marketing schemes to target potential consumers, who they seem to classify as any person currently seeking to lose weight [Orbach, S. 1993. Hunger strike. London: Penguin] estimates this to be about 80% of females in the average Western population). In this paper, I seek to negotiate the complexities of weight-loss attempts, and come to some understanding of the circuits of desire of the anxious weight-loss consumer and the operation of the weight-loss industry at a psychoanalytic level. This involves using a Lacanian approach to understanding desire, anxiety, and jouissance in relation to Lacans masculine and feminine structures.

The biopolitics of Māori biomass: towards a new epistemology for Māori health in Aotearoa/New Zealand

In this paper we consider what impact a biopolitics that creates a compliant self-governing weight-focused population has had on Māori health in Aotearoa/New Zealand. We frame this discussion with three vignettes that in different ways demonstrate the deleterious effects of the individualisation of health on Māori. We argue that the current biopolitics is best explained as ‘the health of Maoris’ not ‘Māori Health’. To counter this current biopolitics we put forward an alternative epistemology, the ‘Atua Matua’ framework. This epistemology pays respect to a Māori view of health that is holistic, encompassing physical, emotional, spiritual, cultural and familial well-being and does not give ground to the requirement for individualism so prevalent in neoliberalism. Finally, we consider what this new epistemology might offer to the public health agendas in Aotearoa and other countries where indigenous populations suffer ill health disproportionately. Thus, our implications have potential not only for Māori health but human health in general.

Re:living the body mass index: How A Lacanian autoethnography can inform public health practice

In this paper, I demonstrate how autoethnography can be utilized as a methodology to conduct public health research. My argument is structured around an application of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory which I see as supporting and extending a critical understanding of the so-called obesity epidemic and related issues. I argue that the body mass index (BMI) measure has achieved an unconscious position as a ‘Sovereign Good’ and, as such, provides the moral and ethical mechanism through which state-sanctioned science, via the wider weight-loss industry, prescribes people into a state of weight anxiety. I conclude that public health practitioners who find themselves promoting weight loss towards the ‘healthy’ range of the BMI are in an unethical position, one that should be entirely rejected. Instead I point to the ethics of desire as an alternative position that might help public health practitioners who are interested in actually improving public health.

Hysterical inquiry and autoethnography: A Lacanian alternative to institutionalized ethical commandments:

This article questions the ethical commandments issued by research ethics committees, particularly in relation to autoethnography, and points towards an alternative based on an examination and application of the psychoanalytic ethics of hysterical inquiry. The authors demonstrate the ethics of hysterical inquiry in operation in qualitative research via a discussion of an autoethnography by Elizabeth Dauphinee and contrast this with a paper ‘on’ autoethnography by Martin Tolich. They argue that these two very different offerings can be positioned respectively as from Lacan’s hysteric’s discourse and the university’s discourse. Finally the authors conclude that hysterical inquiry with its focus on desire can provide a way forward for radical qualitative research, a way out of the binds of institutionalized ethical commandments that threaten the radical potential of qualitative research.

Anxious academics: talking back to the audit culture through collegial, critical and creative autoethnography

ABSTRACT Our New Zealand university recently required us to produce portfolios for a research evaluation process. At a presentation promoting and explaining the process, we raised questions and objections. Pointlessly, it seemed. But we continued to rail and rant about it. One of us set in motion the following discussion, presented here as a series of critical and creative autoethnographic responses. We have resisted, with some anxiety, the urge and the expectation to theorize our experiences or to situate them within ‘the literature’. Our proposition is that ‘giving voice’ in the manner in which we have done so is an affective means of ‘talking back’ against neo-liberal regimes of performativity which may also be effective as a form of localized resistance, strengthening our ability to cope with the anxiety such regimes provoke. We hope our efforts encourage others to develop critical, creative and collegial responses to academic audit regimes.

‘To the horror of experts’: reading beneath scholarship on pro-ana online communities

Abstract Pro-ana online communities in which people share their experiences of eating disorders have attracted concern among scholars and health practitioners because of fears about their potential to encourage disordered eating. This article draws upon concepts from feminist psychoanalysis to ‘read beneath’ a selection of scholarly work on pro-ana communities and consider the implications of this reading for theory and practice in public health. In particular, we draw upon Julia Kristeva’s work to ‘uncover’ how sections of the academy have attempted to manage the horror inherent in the abject in relation to pro-ana. To support our reading we also draw upon critical feminist and sociocultural research on pro-ana, critical public health scholarship and the Foucauldian notion of ‘care of the self’. In accordance with our intent to overcome dichotomous thinking we locate our approach in the context of cultural studies of psychiatry, which is concerned less with clarity and non-contradiction than it is with the social, cultural and political relations of psychiatric knowledge production. This orientation is suited to capturing pro-ana’s complex relationship with medical/psychiatric authority and the nuanced subjectivities of those who participate in such communities. We invite public health scholars and practitioners to appreciate a way of engaging with pro-ana communities that is geared less towards the impetus to control, censor or clinically intervene and more towards understanding them as sites through which individuals living with eating disorders can be in the world, and that both reveal and help us understand the centrality of ambiguity and contradiction to subjectivity.

Social movements, resistance and social change in Aotearoa/New Zealand: an intervention for dialogue, collaboration and synergy

Beginning with the legitimacy crisis of the neoliberal economy and representative democracy following the 2008 financial collapse and bail out decisions, the world witnessed series of mass mobilisations vocalising demands for change in different countries including, but not limited to, the Unites States, Tunisia, Egypt, Brazil, Turkey and Hong Kong. It can be argued that there is a global phenomenon of rising authoritarianism accompanying the neoliberal agenda with a variety of local implementations that has led to the emergence of such movements (Bruff 2014; Bloom 2016). In addition to OXFAM’s (2016) striking finding that 62 people own the same as half of the world (this was 388 in 2010), the current revelations of the so-called ‘Panama Papers’ also demonstrate how the global elite has had a different agenda in terms of securing their funds in tax havens while millions in different countries live through significant social, economic and environmental issues whilst being suppressed by authoritarian policies enacted through the State apparatus. For instance, at the time of writing this editorial, people in France have been taking to the streets against the approval of new labour reforms bringing about precariatisation of working conditions leading to dozens of arrests. Another global protest reported to be the largest ever global civil disobedience against fossil fuels just took place in different countries of the world asking for immediate action as measured carbon dioxide levels are more than 400 parts per million for the first time. The current regimes, organised around neoliberal assumptions, are suffering from an ‘incapacity to deliver economic progress and social welfare, and lack of legitimacy in their political institutions’ (Davies et al. 2016, p. 11) while prioritising the agenda of the global elite. Given the grim circumstances, local actions for direct democracy through interconnected global network structures may become the antidote (Maeckelbergh 2014; Ayers & Saad-Filho 2015). Indeed, similar to capital knowing no borders (Godfrey 2016, p. 4) regardless of the location, grassroots movements are addressing structural inequalities, environmental destruction, poverty and limits of political participation for the sake of having a voice over lands, rivers and oceans as well as our commons and life generally (Caffentzis & Federici 2014). Within the cracks of the structural changes and neoliberal experiments, such movements have been emerging and acting as important change agents at different levels. In fact, one can argue, rather than the self-interested market, social movements and activists are the real innovators that will generate much needed solutions for future generations (Rao et al. 2000; Schneiberg 2013). Traditionally, as social movements have played a crucial role in mitigating inequality through protecting the rights of related stakeholders, in Aotearoa, they have increasingly been called upon to play these roles as the State has receded and reformed, and indeed have moved proactively to take on new roles and fill gaps in service provision and support. For instance, just by looking at the contributions to social movements conferences that took place since 2013, it can be seen that at different locales of Aotearoa various groups of activists, large and small, are speaking up, problematising existing conditions and suggesting solutions

The Alienation of Scholarship in Modern Business Schools: Contributions from Marx and Lacan

This study is based on understanding the alienation of scholars in neoliberal university. Whilst we have a Marxist basis to discuss political economic aspect of alienation in terms of alienation from product and process, we want to extend our argument with a psychoanalytic perspective on alienation from self and others. Hence, as a contribution to Marxist understanding of organisational scholarship, we want to develop the argument that there is a complementary relationship between Marx and Lacan in terms of studying the alienated subjectivities of business schools.