France and the fattened American: animality, consumption and the logic of gavage

AbstractThis article uses the controversy sparked by the 2012 California foie gras ban as springboard for conceptualizing French and Francophone objections to US cultural imperialism and the so-called “obesity epidemic.” In particular, it explores the controversial practice of force-feeding or gavage as a way of examining how ideas about feeding and fattening animalize fat people in subtle ways. It argues that, as a form of consumption involving asymmetrical (and often sexualized, racialized and classed) relations of power, the logic of gavage invokes a plurality of practices for different ends – interpersonal as well as intrapersonal, cultural and cross-cultural – that frame the collective body of “America” as a fattened, but also fattening, “beast.” By probing the complex and unstable network of relationships that gavage signifies and enacts, it shows that animalized representations of the fat American pivots on issues germane to many discussions of “obesity” in general.