{"id":777621,"date":"2025-02-19T09:01:09","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T14:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=777621"},"modified":"2025-02-19T10:44:20","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T15:44:20","slug":"interpreting-meat-theorizing-the-commodification-and-consumption-of-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=777621","title":{"rendered":"‘Interpreting Meat: Theorizing the Commodification and Consumption of Animals’"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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Recognizing meat as a commodity in the contemporary world facilitates the realization that meat exists not only for nutritional or gastronomical pleasure but also to generate money. As a result, the human holds a different (literal and psychic) relation to the animals that produce meat through the mechanism of 'disavowal'. It goes something like this: 'I know that animals are living subjects, yet due to the circle of life, I must eat them to sustain myself'. The disavowal functions to create a gap between belief and action. Also, consider language and naming-practices. Conferring names to 'pet' animals, distinguish them from 'livestock' animals. A name individuates and gives them a moral status, unlike the nameless, non-individuated mass of livestock. These socio-cultural practices permit people to concurrently abhor violence towards animals and continue to eat meat.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n

SARX:<\/strong> What if meat were more than just food \u2014 what if it were shaped by cultural, economic, and psychological forces that influence our relationships with animals? In his book, ‘Interpreting Meat: Theorizing the Commodification and Consumption’ of Animals, professor Teddy Duncan Jr. challenges us to rethink meat as a commodity deeply tied to cultural practices and beliefs. In this interview, Duncan explores the language surrounding meat, the values that shape human-animal relationships, and how understanding these dynamics can lead to a more compassionate and reflective engagement with the world around us. SARX interview with Professor Duncan…<\/em><\/p>\n

You describe meat as a \u201ccommodity\u201d in your book. Could you explain what this means and how it affects our relationship with animals?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Meat is, in the contemporary world, a commodity because it is produced to be bought and sold. Recognizing meat as a commodity does a few things: It facilitates the realization that meat exists not only for nutritional or gastronomical pleasure but also exists to generate money. Additionally, thinking of meat as a commodity tells us that it is contingent rather than necessary. Oftentimes, we look at the objects around us and naturalize them \u2014 \u201cthat is just how that thing exists\u201d \u2014 yet commodities do not emerge from acausal nothingness: they exist due to a certain economic and ideological configuration of the world. Understanding a commodity-object helps us understand culture and why a culture demands a commodity.<\/em><\/p>\n

Further, examining the modern meat-commodity distinguishes it from other forms of meat existing under entirely distinct social and historical circumstances. For instance, raising cows in colonial America to feed one\u2019s family, domesticating goats in an agrarian society, or even my family \u2014 a few generations ago \u2014 who were hunting deer and squirrels in the hills of rural Kentucky to survive. All these examples are distinct from going to the supermarket and purchasing packaged pre-sliced meat for sandwiches. I do not mean a moral or ethical difference here but rather a literal, material difference: There is an entirely different apparatus that produces the meat \u2014 and the human holds a different (literal and psychic) relation to the animal.<\/em><\/p>\n

How does the way we talk about meat and animals influence our understanding of them as living beings versus products for consumption?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

That is a great question! I think that language is crucial to human-animal relations. Consider something such as domestic naming-practices: How does conferring an animal, such as a pet, a name distinguish them from livestock? The answer is this: A name individuates and gives them a moral status, unlike the nameless, non-individuated mass of livestock-animals. There are also insights from theorists such as Carol J. Adams on the function of meat names and the \u201cabsent referent.\u201d For example, we refer to pig-meat as pork and cow-meat as beef, and some assert that this is a way of severing the living animal from the dead animal on a plate.<\/em><\/p>\n

However, even more foundationally, I think that naming-practices are ways of circumventing the traumatic kernel of slaughter: Even if an animal activist calls cow-meat \u201cdead cow flesh\u201d or some other hyper-descriptive term in an attempt to \u201cname\u201d the \u201ctrue reality\u201d of meat, the language can never capture the \u201ctruth\u201d of the slaughter-act. So, rather than language being something that merely avoids naming \u201ctruth,\u201d the even more crucial insight is that language can only impossibly orbit around it. Either way, the slaughter-act exceeds the language that tries to signify it.<\/em><\/p>\n

How do you think people\u2019s most deeply held values can shape their approach to meat consumption and the treatment of animals?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Unlike some, I am radically optimistic about the social field: In general, I think that people love animals, and this is reflected in the growth of animal abuse legislation and the widespread near-unanimous sentiment to protect animals. Simply, I believe that the values are already present, and I reject the thesis (of some) that eating meat is indicative of primitive violence or a sadistic impulse\u2014my friends and family members who eat meat are not somehow uninformed and do not want to (consciously or unconsciously) impose violence on animals. Instead, in the case of meat, there is a mechanism of \u201cdisavowal\u201d at play.<\/em><\/p>\n

This goes something like this: \u201cI know that animals are living subjects, yet due to the circle of life, I must eat them to sustain myself. . .\u201d The disavowal functions to create a gap between belief and action: \u201cYes, I must not harm animals, but because of X, I must consume them.\u201d In the book, I catalogue the different reasons this disavowal exists. The fundamental insight is, though, that it is not the case that people are innately violent or do not value animal life or that there is some concealed reality of meat that people are unfamiliar with (everyone knows what occurs in a slaughterhouse) rather disavowal permits one to concurrently abhor violence towards animals and continue to eat meat. <\/em>SOURCE…<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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