The Impact of Relegation on Supremacy Over Animals

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

It could be said that the marginalisation of animals in contemporary times is to some extent a result of evolutionary processes tied to the emotion of disgust. Disgust, being the visceral reaction at the prospect of incorporating a harmful and diseased object, is an undeniably important evolutionary inheritance that keeps one away from what might sicken them. Raw flesh is one of the few and almost universal disgust elicitors because it still displays animalness. Only once flesh has been processed it becomes acceptable and appetising to eat. Disgust explains why raw flesh is viscerally appaling to us, however the impetus to disguise animalness could also be tied to the difficulty experienced at eating another sentient being, one that you can look at and that looks back at you. Thus, cow becomes beef; pig becomes pork; deer becomes venison etc. These translations are also a result of incorporating commodifying animals and using them as our utility satisfiers. The domination of animals is the domination of nature itself, a domination process central to the life of patriarchal capitalism, which always has to appropriate nature in new ways to expand. Here one only has to think of the Marlboro man type of “real man”, the one that brings the bacon home. The relationship between animals, masculinity and capitalism is one of domination. The domination and control of animals in the commodity chain transforms them into raw materials and as such, what they leave behind after their death does not belong to the animal anymore (beef is not cow), but rather to the capitalist that can divide the products derived from raw materials (not only you get beef, but also offal, tripe, and chitterlings).

This marginalisation as an effect of dominance becomes apparent once animals are incorporate into the spectacle; toys of animals become reproductions of an image that can be owned, animals are placed into zoos under the claim that they play a techno-scientific function and pets are isolated into the private domain of the single family household after being being bought and sold in a market. Clearly the domination and subsequent marginalisation of animals is a result of their placement in the commodity chain. How is it possible then, for the urban individual to reject meat consumption based as exploitative and immoral, whereas the farmer that raised this same animal with attention and dedication is perfectly happy to “salt away [the] pork?” Their relationship to raising animal and then eating them is not one of but, but previously of and. Although the farmer too could be said to dominate animals for economic benefit, their relationship is constitutive of each other, i.e. farmer and animal become dependent on each other while still retaining a certain degree of autonomy. Their relationship is circularly linked, rather than linked as a chain, which is what happens in the commodity chain.

The commodity chain ascribes us roles, which in Marxian terms derive as a result of our relationship to the means of production. Hence these roles are highly analogous with the Marxian conceptualization of social class. In this chain you have raw materials, producers and consumers. Returning to the question at hand, it is precisely these class ascribed roles that explain the reluctance of the conscious urban individual to refute meat. As a consumer, it is the only political revolt one can carry out within the confines of the system itself. It creates the image of the consumer as chooser, which implies that our choices are what keep the commodity chain linked. Thus, all the urban vegan has to do is choose another product provided by the market, one that remedies this moral concern. These choices are seldom named after animal products; vegan chicken, vegan burgers, and my personal favourite, meatloaf, an image of the third degree that takes a dish already isolated from its animal origin and takes the metaphor one step further. The urban vegan can thus continue to symbolically consume animals.