Auteur : Carol J. Adams
Titre : The sexual politics of meat
Date : édition 2015
Tags : véganisme, sexisme, misogynie, intersectionnalité, convergence des luttes.
Résumé (anglais) :
« The Sexual Politics of Meat is Carol Adams inspiring and controversial exploration of the interplay between contemporary society s ingrained cultural misogyny and its obsession with meat and masculinity.
Résumé (français) :
« Dès sa première parution en 1990, La Politique sexuelle de la viande, qualifiée de « bible de la communauté végane » par le New York Times, s’est imposée comme un ouvrage de référence dans le domaine du droit animal. Dans cette théorie critique féministe végétarienne, la féministe militante Carol J. Adams explore la relation entre les valeurs patriarcales et la consommation de viande à travers leurs représentations dans l’histoire, les médias et la littérature. »
Analyse personnelle : The Sexual Politics of meat : si son titre laisse envisager une convergence des luttes (sexisme/spécisme), la « politique sexuelle de la viande » (c’est son titre en français), n’est pas un ouvrage radical. Très pointu dans la sémantique et l’étude des constructions langagières dans notre société patriarcale et oppressive, le versant féministe de l’ouvrage semble plutôt une réussite. En ce qui concerne son versant anti-spéciste, il n’est pas possible de prétendre la même chose : radicalisme absent, confusionnisme, l’ouvrage n’est pas abolitionniste. A de nombreuses reprises, l’autrice semble s’attrister de l’absence d’égalité face à la viande entre les cisgenres femmes et hommes, silençant de fait les animaux non humains, victimes de l’oppression spéciste. Ajoutons à cela quelques formules problématiques comme « animals and humans suffer and die the same way » ou la comparaison des abattoirs aux camps de concentration… Loin d’être un ouvrage prônant une convergence des luttes radicale, pleine et entière, The Sexual Politics of Meat devrait voir son titre revu. Il aurait été plus pertinent de donner un titre du genre « The Carnist Politics of Sexism » (la politique carniste du sexisme) pour faire correspondre au mieux titre et couverture.
Extraits choisis :
In memory of
56 billion each year
153.4 million each day
6.4 million each hour
106 546 each minute
Imagine the day when women talk down streets and are not harassed, stalked, or attacked. Imagine the day when we don’t need battered women’s shelters. Imagine the day when the most frequent mass murderers in our culture are NOT those who kill their families.
Better yet, imagine the day when we live in world where women are safe wherever they are, family members are safe within their homes, and we don’t have mass murderers.
Imagine the day when people respond to someone who says « but I need my sausage in the morning », by saying « of that’s so twentieth century. You know, the century when some of the earliest people talking about climate change were animal activists who understood the interconnections between environnemental destruction and animal agriculture ».
Better yet, imagine the day when people no longer feel they need a « sausage » in the morning.
Imagine the day when women and children are not sold into sexual slavery or prostituted or pornographed.
Better yet, imagine the day when equality, rather than dominance, is sexy.
The Sexual Politics of Meat meas that what, or more precisely who, we eat is determined by the patriarchal politics of our culture, and that the meanings attached to meat eating include meanings clustered around virility. We live in a racist, patriarchal world in which men still have considerable power over women, both in the public sphere (employment and politics) and in the private sphere (at home, where in this country woman-battering results in the death of four women a day). What the Sexual Politics of Meat argues is that the way gender politics is structured into our world is related to how we view animals, especially animals who are consumed. Patriarchy is a gender system that is implicit in human/animal relationships. Moreover, gender construction includes instruction about appropriate foods. Being a man in our culture is tied to identities that they either claim or disown – what « real » men do and don’t do. « Real » men don’t eat quiche. It’s not only an issue of privilege, it’s an issue of symbolism. Manhood is constructed in our culture, in part, by access to meat eating and control of other bodies.
People with power have always eaten meat. The aristocracy of Europe consumed large courses filled with every kind of meat while the laborer consumed the complex carbohydrates. Dietary habits proclaim class distinctions, but they proclaim patriarcal distinctions as well. Women, second-class citizens, are more likely to eat what are considered to be second-class food in a patriarcal culture : vegetables, fruits and grains rather than meat. The sexism in meat eating recapitulates the class distinctions with an added twist : a mythology permeates all classes that meat is a masculine food and meat eating a male activity.
Animals are made absent through language that renames dead bodies before consumers participate in eating them. Our culture further mystifies the term « meat » with gastronomic language, so we do not conjure dead, butchered animals, but cuisine. Language thus contributes even further to animals’ absences. While the cultural meanings of meat and meat eating shift historically, one essential part of meat’s meaning is static : One does not eat meat without the death of an animal. Live animals are thus the absent referents in the concept of meat. The absent referent permits us to forget about the animal as an independent entity ; it also enables us to resist efforts to make animals present.
There are actually three ways by which animals become absent referents. One is litteraly : as I have just argued, through meat eating they are litterally absent because they are dead. Another is definitional : when we eat animals, we change the way we talk about them, for instance, we no longer talk about baby animals but about veal or lamb… The word meat has an absent referent, the dead animals. The third way is metaphorical. Animals become metaphors for describing peuple’s experiences.
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