Description
Critical animal studies is a growing field. Our cultural marker of humanness and therefore distinction is at last being questioned with authority in scholarly conversation. Ideology coming through eco-feminist and ideas of intersectionality are joining forces to throw light on the invisibility of unjust practices towards animals, their bodies and rights as living, sentient beings. This thesis examines that unjustness and discusses how “[…] species based hierarchy that places humans at the apex […]”1 continues “[…] exclusionary foundations […].”2 By critically analyzing images of animal brutality, (for this paper farmed animals), from visual representations of Sue Coe’s work, this thesis will explore the way oppressions intersect and how one oppression has force to give others more power. This thesis will further explore how ecofeminism, through such theorists as Carol Adams and Lori Gruen, have paved the way for this deconstruction of slaughterhouse imagery. I will use ecofeminist ideology to deconstruct and contrast imagery of rape and associated violence with the brutality that farmed animals experience. I will explore Foucauldian notions of power, institutions and the production of ‘docile bodies’ in relation to the intensive factory farming practices and slaughterhouses that Sue Coe bears personal witness to. Furthermore, this thesis will draw on writings such as that of Sigfried Giedion’s Mechanization takes Command to view modern day mechanization in slaughterhouse practices that objectify not only animal bodies and identities but the labor that processes them.
