Meat Love: An Ideology of the Flesh

by Amber Husain

‘You must sit down, says Love, and taste my So I did sit and eat.’ –George Herbert, ‘Love (III)’ In an era of climate catastrophe and corporate agribusiness, sumptuous representations of animal meat increasingly go hand in hand with romantic portrayals of animal life. Revisiting John Berger’s writing on animals, agriculture, and anti-capitalist struggle in Why Look at Animals? (1977), Amber Husain asks how we are drawn to look at dead meat with eyes befitting of life itself, and what happens to us when we do. How is it that desire for slabs, hunks, racks, and rashers of purpose-bred death can be made to swell not despite but in proportion with attachment to its living source? Meat Love is an exploration of our taste for meat and its enduring appeal to the political left as well as the right. Ranging from advertising to art, from Instagram to the blockchain, Meat Love deconstructs the beauty, tragedy, and mystery with which our images of meat are embellished, as well as the political conditions in which the romanticisation of carnivorous hunger can flourish.

Genres: Nonfiction

112 pages, Paperback

Published July 21, 2023

Reviews

[elle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fucking incredible, zero notes. My appetite/love for meat is something I’ve kind of struggled to justify for a long time (and will continue to struggle with for a longer time), but this book frames the inevitable cheapening of animal life & labor via the profit incentive not as a locus for individualized consumer guilt over climate change and/or animal rights necessarily— and paranoia over that guilt— but as a catalyst to imagining a different world and economic system, where animals are recognized as a class and not another natural “renewable” resource for humans to extract.

Contemplating on the aesthetic value of meat, how the “stink of death” has developed from being a vector for disgust, to a signifier of (acquired) taste, eroticism, love, ritual, beauty, and even thrift. The impulse to dominate and create vertical, hierarchal power structures that designate not only between different types/classes of humans, but also between humans and animals as a whole, is an inevitable feature of the capitalist economy. Taking notes from Judith Butler, we’re forced into a corner not only to be faced with the ethic of killing (sometimes even savoring it) but also, with who these killable subjects are. And this Overton window of acceptably “killable subjects” will always expand and shift, so long as we confuse what is beautiful (or can be made beautiful) and necessary and fulfilling with what is ethical and virtuous and equalizing.

[Nadia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok fine I’ll become a vegetarian

[kate vee · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 stars: Solid!

I've been vegan for 7 years and was pleasantly surprised to find a new and compelling argument for veganism in this little book. Or, if not veganism explicitly, at least an argument against the ideology of Meat Love, pointing out the repackaging of bourgouise exploitation and destruction of the Earth for meat consumption into an act of "love." I wanted a bit more from this book though and I feel it presumes too much familiarity with veganism and animal liberation arguments to be as effective as I wanted it to be.

The gross media was effective though.

Here's a passage that I loved:

Peasant conservatism, meanwhile, has no privilege to defend, merely the meaningfulness of a lifestyle so long imposed as to appear without alternative. The same could be saif of the peasant's relationship with meat. While the contemporary upper- and middle-class eater may have a pseudo-peasant's attunement to the nature and vicissitudes of rural animal farming, their positions in the capitalist system could not be more different. Ironically, in fact, it is their relative power in relation to the peasant that sustains both their capacity to play at peasantry and their financial reward for doing so. Thus, however concerned the Meat Lover may seem, or indeed feel, with the ethics of small-scale farming, he remains ironically invested in the very same mode of production whose growth necessitates animal cruelty.

[Meredith D · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely spectacular meditation on the intertwining & conflicting discourse of modern day meat consumption and love. Husain’s viscerally felt longform essay provokes a chilling consideration of the global capitalist system that views nature, and by extension - animal life, as endlessly exploitable resources. Meat Love serves as a timely reminder that a system that rationalizes the brutal extraction of actually quite finite natural resources inevitably will turn to eating itself (if we haven’t begun so already) - an ouroboric living nightmare of cannibal capitalism. A brilliantly articulated and imagined piece of work - vital reading for vegans and carnivores alike.

[joe]

This piece of work feels so masterfully crafted with brevity that it never gives itself the chance to make the reader feel lulled into boredom. It’s not a lecture that would see audience members twiddling their thumbs. It’s snappy and it gets to the crux of every issue raised.

This is not a book merely pushing the message of meat eating being bad or unethical, it looks deeper at the ways in which capitalism and all of it’s wheels and cogs have moved in a direction that leads the general populace into a way of thinking of animal life - non-human life - as merely a commodity. As long as an animal is reared well. As long as it’s had a few fun giddy leaps around an open field, it’s perfectly ok and guiltless to then kill the animal for human consumption.

There seems to be a glaring gap in the general human psyche that leads to an ignorance and an inability to connect the dots of ethical means of practice with regards to meat and the day to day reliance and consumption of it.

As it’s mentioned in the book, arguments are put forward for needing meat consumption and animal labour in order to keep the jobs of farmers comfortable and healthy. Why? Can they not get another job that doesn’t rely on the exploitation of innocent life? The simplest of questions only needs to be put forward for certain ideas to crumble or for people to run away.

I’ve been veggie for 7 or so years and I decided to make a genuine effort at veganism last month. It’s going well. It’s not that difficult when you actively try and put in the effort to get your feet on the road. This book is a reminder in knowing that I’m making a choice that has an impact. A good impact for the right side and a bad impact for those I wish not to align with.

[tinaye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have never struggled with my hunger for meat, but I am inclined to be critical of the industry. This book is heavy handed in the veganism which I did not care for. The other aspects on love of the flesh interested me more, but I can say I will be thinking of this every time I eat meat.

Now, who wants a burger?

[Michaela Y-M · Rating 5 out of 5]

The thorough critique fit into the slim size of the book is incredible; this is the type of writing that is easy to read but with the content, should be reread over and over. Not a word wasted. Flesh-related prose makes it all the more resonant.

[Urja Gaurav · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked this up at a random gallery and it was entirely spectacular... the ideology of 'Meat Love' is so sharp, so rooted in social and cultural analysis. Also I've been watching Anthony Bourdain's Cooks Tour series and I always love when things I'm watching and reading coalesce..... fabulous

[Naomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book of the year x

[rosemary]

bought this lil thing thinking it was about really digging abjection but it's just a vegan book (attempts to use abjection as a weapon)

[Timor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great ideology critique of meat but the comparison to Greek tragedies sometimes gets a bit out of hand.