Health Fascism, Body Politics, and the Anti-State State (Health Fascism Series)

As governments retreat from care, and health increasingly becomes a signifier of discipline—rather than provision—fitness, disability, fatness, illness, Blackness, impairment, and bodily capacity are mobilized into measures of moral worth and political belonging. This panel examines how health, disability, body size, and race are instrumentalized by the state and being reorganized under health fascism. Da’Shaun L. Harrison, Beatrice Adler-Bolton, and Artie Vierkant will discuss what these transformations reveal about the changing relationship between capitalism, the state, and everyday life.