{"id":88,"date":"2023-05-02T00:38:38","date_gmt":"2023-05-02T00:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/?p=88"},"modified":"2023-05-11T07:40:48","modified_gmt":"2023-05-11T07:40:48","slug":"tender-is-the-flesh-by-agustina-bazterrica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/tender-is-the-flesh-by-agustina-bazterrica\/","title":{"rendered":"Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week I am reading Tender Is the Flesh<\/em> by Agustina Bazterrica. This book is horrifically disturbing and I want to warn anyone thinking of reading this book to not only check my trigger warning but also look online for a more extensive list that covers the whole book. I have been interested in learning more about cannibalism and vampiric eating since my first quarter doing food studies and this book is an imaginative look at what the author sees as one of our potential futures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book was published in 2017 in Spanish, but since has been translated into 23 languages. This book’s main plot feels interwoven between this slow progression of the main characters life, and so instead of a summary as I’ve been doing I’m choosing to spend more time talking about the world-building and real-life connections than I will be discussing the plot as I have in prior weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book takes place in a world in which all animals have become carriers of a disease deadly to humans. While the book mainly focuses on the “transition” as it pertains to the meat industry, they have also outlawed all household pets, put down all livestock, and most people won’t go outside without an umbrella of fear of birds. The book follows the main character, Marcos, who works in a high-up position in a slaughterhouse that sells “special meat”, the term they use as referring to humans bred as livestock is heavily frowned upon. We meet Marcos a while into the “transition”, the time period in which selling “heads” (people) has been fully phased in and legalized, but despite his job Marcos is a vegetarian. He lives dissociated from his reality, burdened by the moral implications of his work as well as the recent death of his child and separation from his wife. Marcos often seems quite indifferent to his surroundings, and while he does not eat this “special meat” even coming into conflict over his sisters ownership of a “house head” which I will mention later, he doesn’t have an opposition strong enough to remove himself, or perhaps he is too far gone from the trauma of the last few years to have the energy to care. He still views these people as less than human, you can tell from the language choice that he carries the same biases as those around him. It leaves me to wonder how many others in Bazterrica’s world may feel the same?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book highlights that the speed in which the world made the transition left open opportunities for target violence. The legislation passed so quickly that the treatment of the “special meat” was not a concern, and since it began minority groups, immigrant populations, and women have been heavily targeted for their bodies. In the present day we are seeing more and more attacks on the sovereignty over ones own body, especially over those with the ability to get pregnant. In “Tender Is the Flesh”, heads who are born in captivity are referred to as “First Generation Pure” or FPG’s, and so there is an increasing attack on women who can get pregnant to be taken to facilities. While having sex with a “head” is illegal as they cannot consent, it is clear that the true motivation is the preservation of the meat and not the person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the book we learn much about how this world compares to our present day. “Heads” are often bred in captivity, kept in inhumane conditions, and have their vocal cords removed to prevent screaming before slaughter. Marcus oversees a complex system before slaughter to keep them calm and not ruin the meat, as well as dealing with multiple other parties involved in this new meat industry, which are uncannily similar to those we know of today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“House Heads” are kept in specially built rooms by the highly wealthy, still alive to be served a la carte. “Head Hunting” is another activity for the wealthy, where the rich can hunt people bred in captivity. Marcus visits the breeding center where they buy the “heads” with specific instructions not only for the meat but for their skins, as a new market of human leather goods has picked up. It is on one of these trips that we meet the main conflict of the book. Marcus complains to the breeding plant that his last order was botched, as the tanners have very specific orders. In an attempt to make it up to him, he is delivered a high-quality FPG, a young woman delivered directly to his house. It is here we start to see Marcus struggle internally with his own actions, whereas before he was able to disassociate away from his work, it is now in his barn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He leaves her tied in the barn as he goes to work the next day, as well as to visit his father in the nursing home. We learn a little more about the bleakness of this new world and the ways in which cannibalism has tainted every industry, including nursing homes. This section really drives home what I believe to be one of the key themes of this book, that corporate greed has driven our food industry to the point of destroying each other. It seems that every person is complicit in some kind of horror of this new era, whether or not they directly work for a plant, as Marcus’s father fears his body will be sold by a nurse on the black market. We also learned about his sister Marisa in this time, they are not estranged but defiantly distant, his sister does not contribute anything to her fathers care and seems to have no moral issues with the “transition”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marcus is conflicted about the woman in his barn, but after seeing his family he decides bring her inside and clean her up. While the writing feel tender and gentle, you never really escape the feeling that he really sees her as more of a pet than a person. She has no vocal chords and has been kept in isolation her whole life, and is therefore clearly delayed in her mental development, but instead of acting like a caretaker or a parent, he still very clearly sees her as a fragile possession. While there are no overtly sexual comments or observations, the tone of the narrator feels as though he’s holding back a more feral or predatory feeling. The first section concludes with “What he wants to do is prohibited. But he does it anyway”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first chapters of the second section reveal a lot of information very quickly. Firstly, he has named the woman Jasime after the scent he described smelling on her when he first washed her. This in itself is a rebellion as personifying your “house head” goes against the whole system of “special meat”, but he has also brought her to live in his sons old nursery, which directly violates the law. Having smashed his sons crib after her arrival, this feels like a very gross way of demonstrating how he feels about this woman. She is demonstrated to have the mentality of a young child, and he leaves her locked in her room when he goes out of fear of her hurting herself. It really feels as though Marcos is trying to fill the void of his wife and child AND justify his daily work through this woman. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This becomes even more apparent when it is revealed that Jasmine is eight months pregnant with Marcus’s child. Not only is this illegal, but it is just plain wrong on a basic moral level. Even the government as corrupt as it has become (and with their ulterior motives), recognizes her as unable to consent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chapters in the second half of the book feature the death of Marcus’s father, and the subsequent fallout at his memorial lunch when Marcus discovers his sister has a house head. This should be a moment of mental clarity for Marcus, where he is horrified by his sisters use of another humans body, yet returns home to Jasmine. When she goes into labor, he panics and calls his wife who is revealed to be an nurse. While she is ultimately dismayed at the scene, she delivers the baby boy safely. Jasmine reaches her arms out for her child who is kept out of her reach, and Marcos tells his wife the child is theirs now. He wipes her face and helps her to her feet, before knocking her out and beginning to drag her to the barn for slaughter. His wife is upset, stating that she could have given him more children, but he closes the novel by saying “She had the human look of a domesticated animal”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book uses cannibalism to demonstrate the brutality, not only of the meat industry but of our food systems in general. It covers issues of face, class, and gender, and demonstrates how interconnected our food is to every other aspect of our life. It uses a protagonist who is impossible to root for, yet allows you to develop the tiniest amount of compassion by letting you feel the impossible exhaustion of such a traumatizing few years. Ultimately Marcos is a bad person who demonstrates his character over and over again through his actions, and his lack of empathy for others. But it also seems Bazterrica has presented us with a world in which every character is complicit in the potent brutality and lack of empathy between characters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bazterrica uses very clear comparisons between the current meat and dairy industry and this dystopian future, going into detail on the treatment of the “heads”, even including a scene that allows the reader to see the entire slaughter and harvesting process. And she’s not wrong that our current way of processing meat for slaughter is far from kind, most factory farms keep livestock in cruelly close confines, many chickens face chronic pains from enduring their own weight to meet industry demands. It is also an environmental disaster, with over half the country’s water going to grow food for livestock, and horrendous amounts of carbon emissions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book is wildly disturbing, and the ending is shocking and made me a little nauseous, but if you can stomach horror of this variety I highly recommend it. It allows you to ponder questions about yourself you might not want to, would you eat the “special meat” if everyone around you was? There was minimal talk about people fighting back against this movement, would I have if I had been so exhausted after years of deadly disease on top of personal trauma? It may also make you question your own diet, you may find your plate looking back at you. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week I am reading Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica. This book is horrifically disturbing and I want to warn anyone thinking of reading this book to not only check my trigger warning but also look online for a more extensive list that covers the whole book. I have been interested in learning … Continue reading Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":392,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"geo":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/392"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}