Operating (on) the self: transforming agency through obesity surgery and treatment

Abstract In this article, I describe the processes through which patients diagnosed with ‘morbid obesity’ become active subjects through undergoing obesity surgery and an empowerment lifestyle programme in a Dutch obesity clinic. Following work in actor‐network theory and material semiotics that complicates the distinction between active and passive subjects, I trace how agency is configured and re‐distributed throughout the treatment trajectory. In the clinic's elaborate care assemblage – consisting of dieticians, exercise coaches and psychologists – the person is not only actively involved in his/her own change, the subject of intervention is the self as ‘actor’: his/her material constitution, inclinations and feelings. The empirical examples reveal that a self becomes capable of self‐care only after a costly and laborious conditioning through which patients are completely transformed. In this work, the changed body, implying a new, potentially disruptive reality that patients must learn to cope with, is pivotal to what the patient can do and become. Rather than striving to be disembodied, self‐contained liberal subjects that make sensible decisions for their body, patients become empowered through submission and attachment and by arranging support.
Source: Sociology of Health and Illness - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Original Article Source Type: research