Reading Slaughter: Abattoir Fictions, Space, and Empathy in Late Modernity

by Sune Borkfelt

Overview

Reading Slaughter: Abattoir Fictions, Space, and Empathy in Late Modernity examines literary depictions of slaughterhouses from the development of the industrial abattoir in the late nineteenth century to today. The book focuses on how increasing and ongoing isolation and concealment of slaughter from the surrounding society affects readings and depictions of slaughter and abattoirs in literature, and on the degree to which depictions of animals being slaughtered creates an avenue for empathic reactions in the reader or the opportunity for reflections on human-animal relations. Through chapters on abattoir fictions in relation to narrative empathy, anthropomorphism, urban spaces, rural spaces, human identities and horror fiction, Sune Borkfelt contributes to debates in literary animal studies, human-animal studies and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030989156
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	05/06/2022
Series:	Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	505 KB

About the Author

Sune Borkfelt lectures at Aarhus University, Denmark. His publications include articles and book chapters on nonhuman otherness, postcolonial animals, the naming of nonhuman animals, and the ethics of animal product marketing. He is also co-author of a critical research-based Danish book on hunting.   

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Fleshing Out Invisibilities.- 2. Literary Narratives and the Empathics of Slaughter.- 3. Anthropomorphism and the Abattoir.- 4. Flesh of the City: Slaughterhouses and the Urban.- 5. Ruralities and the Abattoir.- 6. Who Slaughters and Who Consumes? On Butcher(ing) Identities.- 7. Dark Spaces: The Horrific Slaughterhouse.- 8. Coda.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Sune Borkfelt is one of my favorite literary critics. His knowledge of literature is wide and deep, his critical mind is razor-sharp, and his ability to convey insights in eminently readable prose is enviable. This book is a case in point. In a series of astute and sensitive readings, Borkfelt offers a truly enlightening, thought-provoking study of literary depictions of animals, slaughter, and slaughterhouses, pointing the way toward the future of interdisciplinary literary scholarship.” (Mathias Clasen, Associate Professor of English Literature, Aarhus University, Denmark. Author of Why Horror Seduces (2017))

“Reading Slaughter is a game-changer for literary and animal studies. Through a startling array of fictions, Borkfelt shows how slaughterhouses emerge as leaky heterotopias, urban and invisible spaces through which writers can render the sufferings of animals as inextricable from those of people. Just as sounds and smells defy attempts to package modern-industrial meat as free from physical or psychic pain, Borkfelt shows, startling possibilities for fostering narrative empathy emerge through changing stories of slaughter.” (Susan McHugh, Professor of English, University of New England, United States, Author of Animal Stories (2011) and Love in a Time of Slaughters (2019))

Editorial Reviews

Reading Slaughter makes an important contribution to animal studies. Well-researched and wide-ranging, it is a commendable work of survey and close reading that takes one of the key sites of human–animal relations, the slaughterhouse, and subjects it to a long overdue book-length interrogation. … it is a welcome reminder of why we have literary animal studies in the first place.” (Dominic O’Key, The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, May 8, 2023)

From the Publisher