Reading Slaughter

Sune Borkfelt lectures at Aarhus University, Denmark. His publications include articles and book chapters on nonhuman otherness, postcolonial animals, the naming of nonhuman animals, and the ethics of animal product marketing. He is also co-author of a critical research-based Danish book on hunting.

• 1. Introduction: Fleshing Out Invisibilities.- 2. Literary Narratives and the Empathics of Slaughter.- 3. Anthropomorphism and the Abattoir.- 4. Flesh of the City: Slaughterhouses and the Urban.- 5. Ruralities and the Abattoir.- 6. Who Slaughters and Who Consumes? On Butcher(ing) Identities.- 7. Dark Spaces: The Horrific Slaughterhouse.- 8. Coda.

“Reading Slaughter makes an important contribution to animal studies. Well-researched and wide-ranging, it is a commendable work of survey and close reading that takes one of the key sites of human–animal relations, the slaughterhouse, and subjects it to a long overdue book-length interrogation. … it is a welcome reminder of why we have literary animal studies in the first place.” (Dominic O’Key, The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, May 8, 2023)