Affective formations of fat and disabled corporealities in singing performance

In this doctoral thesis, I examine how fat and/or disabled singers’ performances operate, on the one hand, in sensory, corporeal, and affective registers and, on the other, in relation to cultural ideas about fatness/disability. Through case studies from different contexts of musical performance in European and U.S. American popular culture, I explore how these registers of experiencing and meaning-making permeate each other, and how singing performances thus contribute to cultural understandings of corporeality. I am particularly interested in the significance of the relationship between the voice and appearance in how the performances emerge. My approach to corporeality in singing performances draws from affect theory, representational analysis, and new materialist thinking. With the concepts affective invitation and resonance, I explore the singing performance as a relational event that emerges under the influence of cultural norms and conventions but is not defined by them. To discuss how the performances relate to cultural ideas of fatness and disability, I use theoretical frameworks from fat studies and critical disability studies. The study consists of four thematic sections. First, I discuss the circulation of vulnerability in fat/disabled singers’ performances using material from reality TV singing competitions and pop music concerts. Second, I examine how fatness, voice, and gender co-form in the performances of The Voice contestant Jordan Smith. In the third section, I discuss how fatness and disability are performed prosthetically in the musical theatre pieces The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Matilda, and Hairspray. Finally, I explore the pleasurable potentials of fat/disabled singers’ performances of excessive corporeality by analysing performances by popular music artists Beth Ditto, Lizzo, and Wheelchair Sports Camp. My findings indicate that, in mainstream popular music culture, fatness and disability are deviant forms of corporeality that are often addressed in some way by the fat/disabled artists or the media surrounding them. Performances of fatness and disability are informed by representational conventions that invite the viewer-listener to relate to the performances through certain cultural tropes. At the same time, the performances offer complex corporeal and affective invitations to engagement. The vocal elements of the singing performance, in particular, can invite the viewer-listener to experience the performers’ fat/disabled corporeality in ways that challenge representational tropes and preconceived notions. I argue that forming such resonant connections with a fat/disabled performer can provoke shifts in how the viewer listener understands fatness/disability, as well as human corporeality more generally.