Apparatuses of animality: Foucault goes to a slaughterhouse

Foucault Studies

Volumn , Issue 9, 2010, Pages 89-110

  Thierman, Stephen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

Apparatus; Human animal relations; Michel Foucault; Ralph Acampora; Slaughter house

Indexed keywords

EID: 80155156350     PISSN: None     EISSN: 18325203     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.22439/fs.v0i9.3061     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. My title is inspired by Cressida J. Heyes' essay, 'Foucault Goes to Weight Watchers," Hypatia 21 (2006): 126-149.
2. In my ensuing discussion, I will reference many of the theorists who are using Foucault to explore ques-tions related to animals and animality. On a slightly different note, for a selection of essays that aims to bring Foucault into contact with environmental philosophy more broadly conceived, see, Éric Darier (ed.), Discourses of the Environment, (Oxford & Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 1999). Darier's introduction, 'Fou-cault and the Environment," 1-33, provides an especially useful overview of how the different periods in Foucault's thought might be relevant to debates on the environment.
3. Michel Foucault, 'The Confession of the Flesh," in Power/Knowledge: Select Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books Edition, 1980), 193.
4. Foucault's general characterization seems consonant with Jean-Louis Baudry's contemporaneous dis-cussion of apparatuses in the context of film theory. Baudry, for his part, encourages us to turn our attention away from the content of films and to attend, instead, to the 'cinematic apparatus" (i.e. The dark room, the projector, the screen, the seats, etc.) that structures our experience of them. See Jean-Louis Baudry, 'The Apparatus," Camera Obscura 1 (1976): 104-126.
5. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction (New York: Random House, Vintage Books Edition, 1980). See especially, 'Part Two: The Repressive Hypothesis," 15-50.
6. Foucault, 'The Confession of the Flesh," 196.
7. Here, again, Foucault's use of the concept of an apparatus for political/critical ends is largely in-step with Baudry, who believes that the concealment of an apparatic structure can have pernicious ideological consequences and, thus, that its manifestation can produce a 'knowledge effect" that can work in the service of ideological critique. See Jean-Louis Baudry, 'Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Appara-tus," in Philip Rosen (ed.), Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 286-298. Still, while formally similar, there are also stark differences between Foucault and Baudry's respective approaches (e.g. their views on psychoanalysis).
8. Paola Cavalieri thinks Foucault missed many opportunities to deconstruct the notion of 'animality," and she criticizes his 'blatant blindness" when it comes to thinking about other animals. See Paola Cavalieri, 'A Missed Opportunity: Humanism, Anti-Humanism and the Animal Question," in Jodey Castricano (ed.), Animal Subjects: An Ethical Reader in a Posthuman World (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008), 97-123.
9. Donna Haraway also highlights Foucault's 'species chauvinism." However, she clearly believes that Foucauldian concepts can enrich our thinking about human-animal relations. See Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 60. Following Haraway, I intend to take a more constructive approach to Foucault's work.
10. Giorgio Agamben, 'What is an Apparatus?" in What is an Apparatus? And Other Essays, trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 1-24.
11. For a fascinating (Foucauldian) exploration of some of the ways that bovine subjectivity is constituted in relation to new robotic milking technologies, see Lewis Holloway's, 'Subjecting Cows to Robots: Farming Technologies and the Making of Animal Subjects," Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25 (2007), 1041-1060.
12. My use of the term 'apparatus" may share some affinities with Bruno Latour's use of the term 'network" (wherein many incommensurable elements interrelate in a mutually constitutive fashion). Furthermore, Latour's attempt to make the laboratory visible, as an important node in the circulation of a variety of forces, is similar to Baudry's attempt to force the cinematic apparatus into the light, to Foucault's reconstruction of an apparatus of sexuality, and to my own attempt, here, to draw attention to pernicious elements of the slaughterhouse. For some examples of Latour's approach, see, Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993)
13. and Bruno Latour, 'Give Me a Labora-tory and I Will Raise the World," in Mario Biagioli (ed.), The Science Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1999), 258-275.
14. LA Dogworks recruited a 'top architectural team" and 'the best mechanical engineer in the animal care industry" to design a boarding/grooming facility that offers exclusive spa treatments and 'retail therapy" in the boutique. See http://ladogworks.com/welcome.html for more information
15. Gary L. Francione, Introduction to Animal Rights-Your Child or the Dog? (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000), see especially chapter 1. Also, see his article
16. Animals-Property or Persons?," in Cass R. Sun-stein and Martha C. Nussbaum (eds.), Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 108-142.
17. Foucault highlighted a seemingly similar schizophrenia in the strictly human context-what he called an 'antinomy of political reason"-namely, the 'coexistence in political structures of large destructive mecha-nisms and institutions oriented toward the care of individual life." See Michel Foucault, 'The Political Tech-nology of Individuals," in Power (Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, vol.3), ed. James D. Faubion (New York: The New Press, 2000), 405.
18. Michel Foucault, 'Technologies of the Self," in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, vol.1), ed.
19. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (2nd ed.) (New York: Vintage Books, 1995).
20. Foucault, 'Technologies of the Self," 225.
21. Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, vol.2 (New York: Vintage Books, 1990);
22. The Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality, vol.3 (New York: Vintage Books, 1988).
23. Another relevant source would be the 1981-82 lectures given at the College de France, published as Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005).
24. For work that pursues this second line, see Chloë Taylor's, 'Foucault and the Ethics of Eating," in Foucault Studies 9 (2010).
25. The article, 'At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die," by Charlie LeDuff, is reprinted in Cary Wolfe (ed.), Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 183-197.
26. In this section, I venture across much of the same terrain that was first charted out by Clare Palmer in ''Taming the Wild Profusion of Things'? A Study of Foucault, Power and Animals," Environmental Ethics 23 (2002): 339-358.
27. My approach differs from Palmer's primarily in terms of organization and emphasis, as I am interested in drawing some more general ethical conclusions about the power relations I discuss, which is a move Palmer explicitly resists. Elsewhere, Palmer presents an interesting analysis of Foucault's only extended discussion of 'animality;" see Clare Palmer, 'Madness and Animality in Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization," in Peter Atterton and Matthew Calarco (eds.), Animal Philosophy: Ethics and Identity (London & New York: Continuum, 2004), 72-84.
28. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 136.
29. For an excellent application of the theoretical tools of Discipline and Punish to the topic of intensive pig farming, see Dawn Coppin's, 'Foucauldian Hog Futures: The Birth of Mega-Hog Farms," Sociological Quar-terly 44 (2003): 597-616. For a discussion that goes in a different direction than the one I'll pursue here.
30. see Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel's, 'Cows and Sovereignty: Biopower and Animal Life," Borderlands E-journal 1:2 (2002). Wadiwel starts from the distinction between sovereign and disciplinary power and then moves into an exploration of the ways that Agamben's reflections on sovereignty, bare life, and biopower are relevant for thinking about human-animal relations.
31. Also, Nicole Shukin's, Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Bio-political Times (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), works imaginatively (and critically) with the Foucauldian concepts of biopower and biopolitics. In comparison, my analysis has a much more modest/ preliminary character, though ultimately I feel that it is very much in sympathy with the 'zoopolitcal" critique that Shukin aims to engage in.
32. This is not to say that I believe animal training is always morally benign, or that it cannot be corrupted by a trainer's bad faith, but only to suggest that human interactions with other animals must be seen as existing along a broad spectrum of possibilities. For a great discussion of animal training, see Paul Patton, 'Lan-guage, Power, and the Training of Horses," in Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal, 83-99.
33. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction, 85.
34. Michel Foucault, 'Two Lectures, " in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980). See especially p.96-102, for Foucault's discussion of these methodological points.
35. Palmer endorses a similar point, suggesting that it is best to begin analysis by looking at a variety of 'micropractices." See Clare Palmer, ''Taming the Wild Profusion of Things'?," 346.
36. Foucault, 'Two Lectures," 97.
37. Thomas Hobbes, De Cive or The Citizen, ed. Sterling P. Lamprecht (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1949), 100. It is clear that Hobbes uses this metaphor as a thought experiment and that he does not think that humans actually come into being fully formed in this spontaneous manner. Foucault's suggestion seems to be that we should avoid these hypothetical/abstract philosophical beginnings; he would rather have us deal with the detail/complexities that confront us.
38. Sarah Whatmore presents a compelling picture of how enmeshment in a particular context causes Duchess, an elephant, to become a very different creature as compared to her wild counterparts. See the third chapter of Sarah Whatmore, Hybrid Geographies: Natures, Cultures, Spaces (London: SAGE Publications, 2002)
39. Embodying the Wild: Tales of Becoming Elephant," 35-58.
40. Palmer, ''Taming the Wild Profusion of Things'?," 352.
41. The quote in Palmer's text is from Foucault's 'Two Lectures," 99.
42. One variation of this position can be glimpsed in Heidegger's characterization of 'the animal" as 'poor-in-world," whereas man is taken to be 'world-forming." See Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Meta-physics: World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. William McNeil and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 197.
43. There are obviously many other sources that one might also consider. Upton Sinclair's novel, The Jungle: The Uncensored Original Edition (Tucson: Sharp Press, 2003), is a classic.
44. The third chapter in Peter Singer's Animal Liberation (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002)
45. Down on the Factory Farm<," 95-158, has had widespread effect.
46. Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation: the Dark Side of the All-American Meal (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003)
47. and Richard Linklater's film based on the book, would also be interesting to look at, as would Gail Eisnitz's The Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Tale of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry (New York: Prometheus Books, 1997).
48. Paula Young Lee (ed.), Meat, Modernity, and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse (Lebanon: University of New Hampshire Press, 2008) is an excellent collection of essays that trace the historical development of the slaughterhouse, from the 19th to the early 20th-century, in a variety of European and North American contexts. Lee's conclusion to the volume
49. Conclusion: Why Look at Slaughterhouses?," 237-243
50. Conclusion: Why Look at Slaughterhouses?," 237-243, makes explicit connections between this technological form and Foucault's discussion of the Panopticon. As a final suggestion, Jonathan Burt's, 'Conflicts Around Slaughter in Modernity," in The Animal Studies Group (ed.), Killing Animals (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 120-144, has much to recommend it from a Foucauldian perspective, focusing as it does on the wider historical (and technological) context within which it was pos-sible for mass forms of animal killing to emerge. Burt's essay also offers an interesting analysis of the ways that religious forms of slaughter where supported (or challenged) in debates about 'humane" slaughter.
51. Colin Gordon, 'Introduction," in Power (Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, vol.3), ed. James D. Faubion (New York: The New Press, 2000), xxxvi. It is unclear in what context this statement (from 1977, apparently) was originally made, since Gordon leaves it unsourced.
52. My normative evaluations of the slaughterhouse share many affinities with the conclusions reached by Mick Smith in 'The Ethical Space of the Abattoir," Human Ecology Review 9 (2002): 49-58. While his dis-cussion draws specifically on the thought of Hegel, Bourdieu, and Levinas, his focus on 'the evolution of deliberate managerial and spatial techniques that seek to suppress the animals' room for self-expression," 50, is quite consonant with the Foucauldian approach I'll develop here.
53. Two works that expand on the connection between speciesism and racism, which I allude to here, are Cary Wolfe's Animal Rites (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003)
54. especially the fourth chapter, 'Aficionados and Friend Killers: Rearticulating Race and Gender via Species in Hemingway," 122-168
55. and Marjorie Spiegel's The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery, revised and expanded ed. (New York: Mirror Books, 1996).
56. Here, I focus primarily on the fifth chapter, 'Body Bioethics in Realms of the Carnal and the Carceral," in Acampora's book, Corporal Compassion (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), 95-115.
57. All of the original copies where apparently destroyed at the end of the second World War, but the por-trayal I am referring to can be seen in Selling Murder: The Killing Films of the Third Reich (prod. Steward Lansley, dir. Joanna Mack, 53 min., Domino Films Ltd., 1991, videocassette).
58. See Michel Foucault, 'Confronting Governments: Human Rights," in Power (Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, vol.3), 474-475.
59. Jacques Derrida, 'The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)," Critical Inquiry 28 (2002): 378-379.
60. In his discussion of Foucault's relationship to phenomenology, Todd May suggests that Foucault was concerned both with 'explanatory reductionism" (in his early phenomenological work) and with 'catego-rical reductionism" (in his later archaeological and genealogical projects). See Todd May, 'Foucault's Relation to Phenomenology," in Gary Gutting (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, 2nd edition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 284-311. Obviously more needs to be said, but this at least gives me hope that my concern about 'ontological reduction" may not be entirely alien to a Foucauldian inves-tigation of animals/animality.