Published: 2018-12-29

Why Is Capitalism With an Animal Face Not a Solution For Us Either? From Anthropology to a Critique of Political Economy: Florence Burgat’s Carnivorous Humanity

Michał Krzykawski
Section: commentaries and debates
https://doi.org/10.31261/ERRGO.2019.38.08

Abstract

This article aims to introduce Florence Burgat, a phenomenologist and one of the outstanding contemporary animalist philosophers in France, with a special emphasis put on her last book, L’humanité carnivore (2017) in which she analyses “the carnivorous fact.” What Burgat describes as the equivalence principle would let us liberate from our anthropologically conditioned sacrificial structure, whereas clean meat makes it possible to elude the carnivorous fact as irreducible. However, unlike Burgat, I consider this fact in the context of the technological dimension of consumerist capitalism. Going beyond Burgat’s anthropological perspective (though with no intention to question the relevance of her observations), I opt for the perspective of a critique of political economy. What Burgat refers to as “ovo-lacto-meaty plethora” might be seen as an effect of a prototypical disruptive innovation. Therefore, one may read this article as an attempt for making the animal life the object of a critique of political economy.

Citation rules

Krzykawski, M. (2018). Why Is Capitalism With an Animal Face Not a Solution For Us Either? From Anthropology to a Critique of Political Economy: Florence Burgat’s <i>Carnivorous Humanity</i>. Er(r)go. Theory - Literature - Culture, (38). https://doi.org/10.31261/ERRGO.2019.38.08

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ER(R)GO nr 38 (1/2019) - Dyskursy weg(etari)anizmu

No. 38 (2019)
Published: 2019-06-30


ISSN: 1508-6305
eISSN: 2544-3186
Ikona DOI 10.31261/errgo

Publisher
University of Silesia Press | Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego i Wydawnictwo Naukowe "Śląsk"

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