Bacon, Hannah2024-05-092024-05-092025-03-28Bacon, H. (2025). Unspeakable fat, unspeakable beauty: Fatness, apophasis and the overflowing of excess. In M. Whitaker (Ed.), Pursuing Perfection: Faith and the Female Body. SCM Press.9780334065586http://hdl.handle.net/10034/628667This chapter draws on Augustine’s theology of perfect heavenly bodies including his theological rendering of beauty and fat to consider what apophasis might mean for feminist theological thinking about fatness and women’s fat. Routinely criticized for promoting a flight from the body and its excessive passions and a vision of resurrection bodies as free from the imperfections of the material flesh, Augustine provides an interesting although perhaps unlikely dialogue partner for thinking about this. My claim is that there is much to glean from him, despite the difficulties he presents. There is also much to garner from feminist fat activism and from critical feminist reflections on the fluidity of fat embodiment. Both inform my feminist theological appraisal of fat bodies as unspeakable bodieshttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/apophasisfatfat shameeconomy of knowingfeminismAugustineexcessheaveneschatologyBook chapter