The Burden of Brown Bodies

Abstract

Recent theorizations of biopedagogies, drawing on Foucault’s thinking about biopower and biopolitics, coupled with contemporary understandings of pedagogy as a cultural practice, provide a useful analytic for interrogating the workings of obesity discourses. In this article, we aim to extend thinking about biopedagogies through a reading of public health research texts that produce “evidence” about obesity and Brown bodies. We consider the role public health researchers may play as pedagogues in the art and practices of life. We chart how some public health research utilizes normalizing practices and produces discourses of ignorance that constitute bodies as objects to be worked on and taught. Finally, we flag up our concern that biopedagogical efforts to solve public health issues may occlude potential detrimental effects for individuals and their health.