Revolting Bodies: the Pedagogy of Disgust in Public Health Campaigns

Abstract

The developers of public health campaigns have often attempted to elicit the emotion of disgust to persuade members of their target audiences to change their behaviour in the interests of their health. This article identifies and analyses the dominant types of disgust that were employed in a collection of public health campaign texts. It was found that ‘animal reminder’ disgust, ‘liminality’ disgust, ‘matter out of place’ disgust and ‘moral’ disgust were all used in various ways in the campaign materials examined. The implications for how the human body, health and illness are conceptualised and understood and the moral meanings that are related to disgust responses are discussed. It is argued that the use of disgust in public health campaigns has serious political and ethical implications. Advocates of using such tactics should be aware of the challenge they pose to human dignity and their perpetuation of the Self and Other binary opposition that marginalises and stigmatises already disadvantaged individuals and social group.