Patel and Moore offered a rather basic interpretation of the chicken farming industry in their intro to History of the World in Seven Cheap Objects. Therefore, I would like to expand on their ideas in a more appropriate way(as well as offer a lighthearted critique of Patel and Moore) in order to properly acknowledge the role of capitalism, ontological vulnerability, and obfuscation that occurs in order to create Cheap Naturelives.
Patel and Moore make it very clear in their introduction that there are multiple categories of “cheap,” for instance, Cheap Work, Cheap Care, or Cheap Money. When they utilize the example of industrial chicken farming, they refer to the chickens as being in the category of Cheap Nature. In doing so, the authors are further subjecting the chickens to a subordinate position in their own obfuscation and representation. No longer are the chickens chickens- i.e, real, materially tangible chickens, they are part of an aesthetic myth (“Nature”)which exists solely to project human needs and wants. The chickens are given a place outside of humanity, outside of civilization, banished to solely exist “out there” in the beautiful land of wilderness.
Instead of speaking of the chickens as individual lives(Cheap Lives, if you will), the authors abstract what it means to be a chicken to create a vague “chicken-ness.” The material chicken is not seen as a material chicken. To be fair, this is more of a capitalism-based issue than an issue with Patel and Moore directly. They at least make somewhat of an effort to acknowledge the constant barrage of misery the chickens and other animals have to go through- “Finally, persistent and frequent acts of chauvinism against categories of animal and human life…” However, unfortunately all of the people they mention who are affected by these “persistent and frequent acts” are humans- “women, the colonized, the poor, people of color, and immigrants.”
I will go further to mention that many critics of the animal agriculture industry utilize this vague abstraction of “chicken-ness” to prove a point about how many animals are being harmed each day. Unfortunately, that only does the animals they are trying to help a disservice. It is impossible to comprehend what a thousand, a million, or a billion chickens look like. Again, the material chicken is forgotten, lumped together with billions and billions of their blurred, feathered brethren.
I propose that chickens and other nonhuman animals should be considered as Cheap Lives, and not Cheap Nature. As a compromise, I could accept Cheap NatureLives. Even though I do have some critiques about Patel and Moore’s discussion of industrial chicken farming, I am intrigued to read further and see what more they have to say. However, if they did want to read something that discussed nonhuman lives in a less demeaning matter, I would politely recommend The Cow With Ear Tag #1389 by Katheryn Gillespie.
Sources:
Patel, Raj. Moore, Jason. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. 2017.
Shapiro, Kenneth. The Death of the Animal: Ontological Vulnerability. 1989.
Benediktsson, Karl. Lund, Katrin Anna. Conversations with Landscape. 2010.
Rayne, I enjoyed reading your perspective on NatureLives in relation to chickens and other animal lives. From my understanding of your post, Patel and Moore engage in the cheapening of chicken by not even registering its life and categorizing chickens in nature. I agree that there are many ways that our society is been taught to categorize animals and their intrinsic, monetary, or human centered--or not--value. For your argument, could giving chickens and other animals 'life' be a way to pursue the anti-cheapness strategy?
ReplyDeleteHi Rayne, I agree with your wanting to call chickens "Cheap Life". I found it ironic that Patel and Moore point out the fact that humans separate themselves from nature and animals when they influence each other so deeply. They even bring up the example of the new species of mosquito in the London Underground as an example of humans producing environment and environment producing humans, in fact they call it World-Ecology. I would maybe go further and say humans belong in "cheap nature" and "cheap lives" as do chickens. One doesn't exclude the other and I'm sure one can and does exist in multiple spheres of cheap.
ReplyDeleteIt's true Patel and Moore are utilizing some of the dominant culture's terms in order to wage their critique. The would ultimately agree with you about chickens being part of life--in fact their term World Ecology as Erika notes. They write at the end of their introduction, "capitalism is not part of ecology—it is an ecology. a set of relationships integrating power, capital, and nature." It would be valuable to think about what is the relationship between nature and culture set out in their definition of world ecology and their proposal for what they call "reparation ecology." These are some of the keywords in this essay.
ReplyDeleteWorth noting also that this is a book written by academics who are hoping to reach an audience outside of academia. And i think that maybe that speaks to their distinction between "nature" and "life" much more than their actual critical thinking does about these issues does. And this leads us to think about language and writing: what are the best strategies for reaching a larger audience in discussing these exploitative practices of cheapness from a materialist perspective that remains both accessible and critical?