lecture

what is a meat?

• “meat is a curious thing” (Fiddes:11)

• animals are good to think with

  • others are good to eat

• meat as a human artefact

what makes meat n food tasty?

• Mary Douglas: not qualities inherent in the thing itself

• ideas of food, personhood n place

• enjoyment isn’t an unspecified experience

• enjoyment as the experience of fulfilling a particular idea of the self

why meat then? - Fiddes 1991

• reinforcing human control n domination over nature

• meat n masculinity

• eating meat n sociality

the refusal of meat

• the barbarity of meat

• unsafe meat

  • Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)

  • Mad Cow Disease

• resist hamburgers movement

  • mcdonald’s n anti-globalisation movement

• vegetarianism n animal rights

• abstinence, self-discipline, enlightenment

  • religions n proscription of meat

  • partial/total abstinence from meat

  • fasting

what we don’t eat & why

• Marvin Harris n Cultural Materialism

  • pigs unsuited to the climate and ecology of ancient Middle East

  • storing pork not possible w/ resulting development of pathogens n parasites in that given climate

• Marshall Sahlins n symbolic interpretation

  • humans eat animals who are far removed from their culturally constructed notion of humanity

  • pets are quasi-humans ∴ not edible

  • livestock is edible as it’s conceptualised as things “not personified or thoughts in anthropomorphic terms”

  • anomalous and impure animals aren’t edible » rats n mice occupy human spaces, uninvited

• Mary Douglas: the abominatios of Leviticus

  • Biblical dietary rules:

    • “you must distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between living creatures that may be eaten and those that may not be eaten”

    • etc

    • she tries to understand the distinction between what is holy and what’s an abominations

      • rules can be understood as a way of creating the holiness of God in human lives

    • an important aspect of holiness is wholeness or completeness » the dietary rules relate to this need for unity n wholeness

alternative explanations

1. the rules are arbitrary, rather enforced as a form of discipline

2. medical explanations » the rules help avoid excessive greed and gluttony which are bad for health n ethical well-being

3. avoidance is of certain types of animals

• “holiness means keepings distinct the categories of creation”

• cloven-hoofed, cud-chewing n ungulates are the model of the proper kind of food for a pastoralist

• earth, waters n the firmament - anything contrary to these characteristics is not holy

  • in the firmament, 2-legged fowls fly w wings

  • in the water, scaly fish swim w fins

  • on the earth, 4-legged animals hop, jump or walk

    • anomalous animals forbidden:

      • pigs = cloven hooves but not ruminants (don’t chew cud)

      • shellfish = lack scales n fins

      • flightless birds = can’t fly

      • mice = appear to have hands, but walk on all fours

4. we don’t eat animals, we eat meat

Carlous Fausto: feasting on people

• animism

• animals, plants, gods n spirits are also potentially persons and can occupy a subject position in their dealings w humans

• if animals are people, how can you distinguish eating meat from cannibalism?

food n kinship in Amazonia

• food n kinship - a creation of a relation

• commensality n the sharing of meat not only characterise the relation between relatives but produce relatives

• eating like someone n with someone is a primary vector of identity

• eating like n with someone begins or completes a transformation leading to identification w this someone

the risk of becoming that someone

• by consuming the predator part of the prey, the killer runs the risk of becoming prey

  • eating someone triggers a transformation leading to identification between predator n prey - an identification, which, as ambivalent, since it’s never one-way

• an animal subject needs to be reduced to the condition of an inert object

  • to transform game into food is to remove its capacity to act toward another self, to relate to others - a capacity proper to beings qua persons

• shamanic treatment: reducing the animal’s agentive-transformative capacity

• culinary preparation: boiling is more efficient than roasting

the problem w meat

• refusing meat

• disguising meat

• the organic eater

  • spread of organic burger restaurants catering for same sociological niche w vegetarianism

• rediscovering meat, eating local meat

  • recapturing meat beyond the industrial eater

making pigs local

• how are pigs made local?

  • “if you feed pigs pumpkins in the fall, they’ll taste like pumpkin”

• experiencing “the local” at the farmers’ market

• tasting the local

• discernment n marketing

  • a way of seeing, feeding, breeding n tasting an animal

what is meat then?

• not an animals

• we don’t eat animals, we eat meat

• an human artefact

• a problem

• eating/refusing meat as the experience of a certain idea of the self, identity n society

• the process of transforming animals into edible meat is moral, existential n political