Description
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. Table of Contents 1 Introduction: Fleshing Out Invisibilities Visibility and Slaughterhouse Histories Decoding Slaughterhouses Heterotopias and the Invisibility of Violence and Death Literature and the Invisible Slaughterhouse Scope and Outline of Reading Slaughter 2 Literary Narratives and the Empathics of Slaughter Delimitations and Definitions Literary Empathy and Animals: Exclusions and Misconceptions Empathy and Anonymous Animals Empathy and Nonhuman Individualities Emotion, Context, and Distance to Slaughter Empathy, Vulnerability, Sentimentalism, and Care 3 Anthropomorphism and the Abattoir Slaughter and the Anthropomorphic Animal Narrating Bovine Mythology in James Agee’s ‘A Mother’s Tale’ Absurdity and Anthropomorphism: Astley’s The End of My Tether Slaughter, Anthropomorphism, Empathy 4 Flesh of the City: Slaughterhouses and the Urban Concealment and Deindividualization: Egolf’s Lord of the Barnyard Slaughter and the Working Beast The Proud Slaughterer’s Sense of Place: Hind’s The Dear Green Place Humans and Animals: Parallel Disappearances in the Urban 5 Ruralities and the Abattoir Nostalgia, Rurality, and ‘A Question of Place’ Bovines and Rural/Urban Contrasts: Sterchi’s The Cow Rurality, Care Ethics, and Empathy 6 Who Slaughters and Who Consumes? On Butcher(ing) Identities Shades of Whiteness, Absence of Blackness Violence in the Workplace: Deviance and Marginalization (En)Gendered Slaughter Slaughter, Identities, Animals 7 Dark Spaces: The Horrific Slaughterhouse Vulnerable Animal Horrors Being Meat: Others Eating Humans Cannibalism and the Abattoir 8 Coda
