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<I>Oryx and Crake</I> and the New Nostalgia for Meat

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<I>Oryx and Crake</I> and the New Nostalgia for Meat Society and Animals 17 (2009) 241-256 brill.nl/soan Oryx and Crake and the New Nostalgia for Meat Jovian Parry University of Canterbury [email protected] Abstract Recent years have seen the development of a new trend in gastronomic discourse toward acknowledging and even valorizing the role of animal slaughter in meat production. Th is devel- opment problematizes some of the ideas of infl uential theorists of meat such as Fiddes (1990) and Adams (1991): namely, that the animal in (post)modernity has been rendered invisible in the process of meat production and consumption (Adams, 1991), and that meat itself is a com- modity with a declining reputation (Fiddes, 1990). Th is paper analyzes the role of nostalgia in this trend toward do-it-yourself (or at least witness-it-yourself ) slaughter, and takes these devel- opments in cultural tastes and feelings as a context within which to analyze the special signifi - cance of meat in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. In identifying this burgeoning nostalgia for meat and contextualizing it within a risk-refl exive, consumer-driven, dystopian near-future soci- ety of the author’s own devising, Oryx and Crake foregrounds and illuminates these real-world developments in the meanings of meat. Keywords cruelty, human-animal relations, in vitro meat, Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake, meat, Nature, nostalgia, slaughter, vegetarianism I. Introduction In 1990, anthropologist Nick Fiddes published what was to become a key text in the social scientifi c study of meat. Meat: A Natural Symbol (Fiddes, 1990) was an exhaustively researched and engagingly written compendium of statis- tics, literature, and qualitative interviews on the subject of meat. In it, Fiddes argued that meat is a powerful symbol of human dominion over “Nature.” He suggested, however, that such symbolic subjugation of “Nature” was no longer in line with the new social mores of ecology and environmentalism (pp. 230-232); this contradiction, combined with spiraling food scares and well-publicized health risks, was resulting in what he termed the “turbulently declining reputation of meat” (p. 233). Other theorists agreed—vegetarianism © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI: 10.1163/156853009X445406 242 J. Parry / Society and Animals 17 (2009) 241-256 was on the rise, and meat remained popular only because the animal had been rendered completely invisible from the act of meat-eating (Adams, 1991, p. 40). Th e enduring popularity of fl esh-eating hinged upon this subterfuge: the slaughter of animals was kept safely obscured behind high walls in euphe- mistically named “food processing units” (Vialles, 1994, pp. 19-32), meat was presented neatly shrink-wrapped in anonymous shapes (Fiddes, 1990, p. 95), and even the language used to speak of meat served to obscure its violent ori- gins (Adams ,1991, pp. 63-76; Fiddes, 1990, p. 97). Once the animal had truly been brought back into the equation, eating meat would naturally become problematic: as the popular adage holds, if slaughterhouses had glass walls, we’d all be vegetarians. Th e theories sketched above all have valid points. Recent trends in gas- tronomy suggest, however, that something more complex may be at work: the meanings of meat in post-modernity,1 it appears, are not so easy to pin down. Th e last eight or nine years have witnessed an explosion of books, articles, and documentaries in which the slaughter of animals for food is openly acknowl- edged, even valorized. Celebrity chefs slaughter animals in front of live studio audiences (see Moskin, 2008); journalists “adopt” calves and follow their progress through the cattle-raising industry before fi nally eating them (Pollan, 2002); documentaries extol the spiritual benefi ts of raising and slaughtering one’s own animals (Young, 2005). In order to make sense of these texts, it is illuminating to consider them in reference to another: the novel Oryx and Crake (2003a), Margaret Atwood’s dystopian vision of consumer capitalism run rampant. In what follows, I will use the developments in cultural taste and feeling described above as a con- text within which to analyze Atwood’s project in Oryx and Crake—a novel that foregrounds the theme of human-animal relations that underlies so much of Atwood’s previous work (Borrell, 2005; McKay, 2005). As Arm- strong (2008) and Tiffi n (2007) have noted, human-animal relations are of particular relevance in Oryx and Crake: ruminations on the edibility of human and nonhuman animals alike suff use the narrative, with the story’s main character constantly under the threat of being eaten himself (Tiffi n, 2007). Furthermore, the ethical ramifi cations of genetically modifying nonhuman animals for consumption is clearly one of the novel’s concerns (Armstrong, 2008), and Atwood herself recalls “noting with alarm that trends derided ten years ago as paranoid fantasies had become possibilities, then actualities” (Atwood, 2003b, p. 2). Oryx and Crake can therefore help in identifying some of the characteristics of the current shift in attitudes to meat and “meat animals.” J. Parry / Society and Animals 17 (2009) 241-256 243 II. Th e Prestige of Meat in Oryx and Crake In many societies, our own Western postindustrial one included, animal fl esh is accorded a special prestige, and a special set of meanings, which far out- weigh any strictly nutritional value it may possess (Fiddes, 1990, p. 12). Th is is emphatically the case in the near-future world of Oryx and Crake. Meat is viewed by the characters in the novel as the “real” thing, as more desirable than soy-based substitutes, and as somehow the incarnation of a golden bygone era when life was better and more meaningful. Furthermore, the “naturalness” of the meat in question is key to the amount of prestige that is accorded it: labo- ratory-grown meat is heavily derided, whereas meat from real, once-living ani- mals is much more prestigious. Th ese examples of the nostalgic fetishization of meat, although they are drawn from a fi ctional text, nevertheless accurately refl ect recent trends in the real world, providing a framework within which to consider the inner workings and implications of this new nostalgia for meat. In the broiling world of climatic upheaval and deepening social injustice that Oryx and Crake so vividly describes, meat is becoming harder and harder to come by. Not only is a warming world wreaking havoc on agricultural pro- duction, but disease and biological terrorism are running rampant through the meat production sectors. Th e novel opens with young Jimmy’s earliest complete memory: a bonfi re of cows and sheep and pigs, burned because they have been dangerously contaminated, infected by saboteurs unknown with a “hostile bioform,” which necessitates their destruction (pp. 16-17). Such an image will have an immediate real-world referent in the minds of many read- ers: in the late 1980s and again in the mid-1990s in Britain, vast piles of cows were condemned to the charnel pits, amid fears that a human-caused (and potentially human-threatening) disease called Bovine Spongiform Encepha- lecy (BSE) was festering within them (Bell and Valentine, 1997, p. 51; Frank- lin 1999, pp. 169-170; Rifkin, 1992, p. 143). Further scares regarding other “food animals” were to follow (Bell and Valentine, 1997, p. 51): increasingly, eating meat is becoming a risky business (Fiddes, 1990; Franklin, 1999, pp. 162-168). A brief discussion of the sociological concept of risk is in order here: in a nutshell, risk theory posits that as the control exerted by humans over the nonhuman world becomes ever more complete, the risks of catastrophe when that control slips become greater and greater (Franklin, 1999, pp. 57-60). Modern methods of meat production embody this double bind of control and catastrophe perfectly: the BSE crisis, after all, is widely thought to have been precipitated by the excessive, unnatural control that the modern factory 244 J. Parry / Society and Animals 17 (2009) 241-256 production of beef entails: namely, the practice of feeding protein-rich sheep off al to cows in order to cut costs and rapidly fatten them for slaughter (Rifkin, 1993, p. 143; Fiddes, 1991, p. 139; Franklin, 1999, p. 168). Writes British philosopher Mary Midgley of the BSE crisis: “[T]hese consequences are not, then, an accident. Th ey fl ow directly from the moral obtuseness that goes with greed” (Midgley, 2004, pp. 104-5). Oryx and Crake simply takes this concept of “the moral obtuseness of greed” a step further: the burning piles of animals at the beginning of the novel have been intentionally infected, very possibly to drive up meat prices (Atwood, 2003a, p. 18). Th e inexorable logic of the mar- ket dictates that disasters can potentially be as lucrative as they can be devas- tating. As Oryx and Crake makes clear, ultimately it is consumer capitalism itself that is the method of control spawning such debilitating risks. In this near-future world of risk run rampant, meat is becoming scarce, and safer and cheaper soy substitutes begin to dominate the market. Readily avail- able meat, real meat, is the stuff of dreams, a fond memory from a bygone world. “Everyone’s parents moaned on about stuff like that,” Jimmy thinks to himself. “Remember hamburger chains, always real beef, remember hot-dog stands? Remember before New York was New New York? Remember when voting mattered? ” (Atwood, 2003a, p. 63; italics in the original). Perhaps it is not surprising that this nostalgia for the lost golden days of the world before would manifest itself in a fetishization of an edible commodity, given that, in Oryx and Crake, hedonistic consumerism is essentially the new religion (Atwood, 2003a, p.
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