john sanbonmatsu, the omnivore’s deception: blood and soil — review
the ninth chapter of sanbonmatsu's omnivore "blood and soil" begins with the whistler sled dog killings after the 2010 winter olympics in canada. the dogs had been useful while tourists wanted sled rides, but when demand dropped, they became surplus “stock.” so they were shot and stabbed. sanbonmatsu writes "we ourselves ask as little of the other beings with whom we share our world: we don’t want the animals we exploit to suffer “unnecessarily,” only as much as is necessary for them to die. and animals deserve to die, we think, because they do not deserve to live."
it's exactly as sanbonmatsu says, not only that animals become unworthy to live if they are deemed to do so, and all laws and corporations follow those "standards", but that the stratification of labour permits other entities from getting involved, the increasingly stingy standards of the populace prevents random mass adoptions of animals of all kinds, and most importantly, the ethical problems regarding what happens to animals once they're in the hands of whichever butcher society has been instructed to be responsible for them (in the dog's case, their literal handler and caregiver had to violently stab them to death) are actually postponed, purified and operationally credited to a niche sphere of economics that could be called something along the lines of "pity wagering".
pity wagering, a mechanism generalized in stefanoni's terms as the "dietary dispositif" is then in this case the sponsorship, legislation trading and ethical broadcasting that a minor group of half-involved agents get to vaguely argue around, so as to present a "moral reward" to the public, or rather, a moral compromise that whatever needed to be handled has been handled with a vague sense of care. sanbonmatsu asks us why the main moral question is only related to how much suffering is too much, rather than whether there is any right to kill them at all, and the answer is clearly related to the idea that since all other immediate options don't exist, but the weight of a live creature that nobody can be responsible for still exists, the question of disposal turns beings to sanitation, and turns the public to observers attempting to deal with their own grief, which leads to this form of murder economy, where a brief mostly non legalized dispute gets swapped around between participants who don't just trade in pity but often times trade in framing too, so as to avoid the sensitivity and guilt that clearly arises out of passive responsibility. sanbonmatsu shows us that so long as the killing is quick, regulated, sanitized, or professionally managed, the animal’s lost future disappears from view.
"why, then, shouldn’t physicians also be permitted to euthanize the chronically ill, the disabled, and the cognitively impaired? such defective individuals would be relieved of the “suffering” caused by the worthlessness of their lives, while society would in turn be relieved of a drain on its finite resources by “idiots.”" he then contrasts this idea directly with holocaust rhetoric, arguing that a sort of systematization of death, maybe a machine of death, actually connects to the earlier pity wagering claim. "relieved of a drain on its finite resources" isn't much different from the idea society is actually relieved from having to whatsoever witness or be in any way obligate to those people.
in many ways, the instrumentalization of resources and the arrogant view of power contribute to this too, since the more the abject is seen as in the way, the more killing it is excused. in the same way, if a certain subject that is supposed to be killed soon is mass produced, the idea that it has some essential or inherited reason to remain in this world also loses argumentative value. in this way, sanbonmatsu indirectly shows how narratives dont just become abstract by being cultivated within an economy that instrumentalizes and detaches values, events, bodies and moral tags, but also, abstraction itself in its more basic form has the immediate and direct power of deterritorializing and detaching entirely basic systems of care and responsibility. in a way, this is not just ideological but nearly an evolutionary-level failure, that systems of abstraction developed before the ethics necessary to consider them became possible.
"the suffering of jews and others at treblinka and other camps—transported by train in the same cars used to ferry cattle to their doom—was even more horrific. the victims, deceived into thinking they were to be given showers, were made to strip naked, then beaten and marched at gunpoint into a large room." sanbonmatsu says that the inventor of the zyklon-b "a more humane method" of genocide, august becker, couldn't see the actions of the jews as anything but "behaviors" that the machine is supposed to optimize for. then the comparison is made literal, because the jews are being carried on the same wagons meant to transport actual cattle at some point.
sanbonmatsu successfully shows us that it's not only that animal genocide could produce human genocide in the future, but that animal cafos and systems of logic and transportation already literally are inspired, constructed and supported by existing systems of and for human genocide. this connects us back to the abstraction point as well, since dying in the holocaust is in many ways comparable to being abstracted away from the world, as the jews were supposedly lead to believe they were to be taken to a shower, essentially decontextualizing and denarrativizing their entire lives away from them before they die. abstraction turns survival into the same behavior-logic that animals exhibit in cafos, but also, into the same emptiness of death and the same type of spatial struggle exhibited in actual genocides.
"when victims arrived at treblinka, they were given haircuts and delousing to make them think they weren’t in imminent danger. then they were killed. the nazis did these things not out of kindness, but to prevent their victims from rebelling, hence impeding the efficient functioning of the apparatus." its in fact almost ironic that bystanders all over the world didn't and still don't realize how this very rhetorical device is another part of the pity wager. how could it be possible that a genocidal entity that is already considering methods of killing across a variety of economic and abstractive factors, that already frames survival as behavior and disposal as management, how could such an entity possibly seriously consider "more ethical methods"?
"our relations with other animals are suffused with this psychological structure. scientists describe “sacrificing” animals in their experiments—rather than killing them. wildlife officials speak of “managing” animal “resources”—instead of shooting, gassing, or stomping to death millions of animals, often at the behest of cattle ranchers." as sanbonmatsu says. how could such an entity consider the possibility of better treatment. the very act of better treatment requires a base standard of attempted positive treatment to work against. the act of better treatment itself isn't even pity for the animals but for those who have to deal with the abject existence of brutality in an era of the world where brutality itself is demarcated and considered unethical.
you quickly begin to realize that, it's not just as sanbonmatsu says about gas, that gassing may make killing smoother for the system, but it still leads directly to terror and confinement, not only is the rhetoric around it a sleight of hand "with a wink and smile, organic farmers meanwhile quip that the animals they raise have a nice life and “only one bad day.”" which disregards the fact the confinement is way worse than the death itself due to the amount of passive torture it produces in horrible conditions, but that this entire system is built on top of a pity laundering that no longer even wants to consider brutality. the "human" entity has somehow convinced itself that it is being sensible by considering its own preferences for torture as humane considerations, or as an audaciously non-obligate pleasantry or favor towards the subject of genocide.
as sanbonmatsu notes, "höppner wrote: “if the most humane solution might not be to finish off those of the jews who are not employable by means of some quick-working device. at any rate, that would be more pleasant than to let them starve to death.” sanbonmatsu, even if he doesn't outright frame it as an economics of pity, does get very near this argument when he says that "once the decision to kill had been made, everything else was to be permitted. nazi quips about “pleasant” deaths and “humane” murder only served to demonstrate the vast differential in power between perpetrators and victims, those authorized to kill and those authorized to die." this differential in power is the real hidden variable behind an ethics of pity. the very act of an asymmetrical consideration on its own doesn't say much, but a vast system with a long history and explicit methods of interacting with the world will already have built, sustained and cultivated an entire logic of self-perpetuation that heavily outweighs any ability to consider an "ethics" laden within this situation.
he further notes "notwithstanding their claims to “care about” the animals they kill, even the most “conscientious” of meat apologists can’t help mocking the vulnerability of their victims. it is more than coincidence that the slaughterhouse ramp designed by temple grandin is known in the meat industry as “the stairway to paradise,” while the funnel at treblinka, through which prisoners were herded to their deaths, was called himmelweg, or “road to heaven,” by the ss". what this shows, what this really shows, above all else, is that the perpetuation of animal agriculture is in a way the hauntology, fetishization, indirect symbolic transfer or reappropriation of human genocide onto animal genocide. even if these two systems begin to co-exist at similar times, "inspire" and transfer to eachother, it's not a mistake to say that a part of why people genocide animals is so that they don't do it as much to eachother.
and why would they feel the need to do it? to answer that, the book "the human and the meat" by chiara stefanoni can help us. in it, chiara argues hat the animal agriculture industry itself becomes a genocidal power vaccuum that creates jobs or serves almost like an arena for people to indirectly compete over their own resources through the bodies of animals. stefanoni shows us that hygienists and animal advocates want state/public centralization for health and humane reform; butchers defend private property, craft authority, local meat economies, and their right to slaughter on their own premises, whereas meatpacking companies push corporate centralization, mass production, trade liberalization, and profit. “due to the size and complexity of abattoirs, they were often called ‘cities’ or ‘towns’, like the famous ‘city of blood’, i.e. la villette abattoir, or ‘meat city’, i.e. the first major slaughterhouse in copenhagen, or ‘packingtown’, i.e. chicago’s union stock yard.”
an entire city isn't built for no reason, and doesn't exist just to repurpose human genocide into a political weapon on its own. but a big city does exist because some form of economy is pushing everyone to define themselves against a sacrificial system, the politicization of death and torture itself is allowed to be performed on anything without the necessary authorization, language or legislation to defend itself. in many ways, the world has allowed itself, has proposed to itself that it's allowed to test the most horrible aspects of the bureaucratic system directly on any entity not powerful enough to resist its process. this simulation of political power itself is heralded by meat-eaters, literally raised to the level of a publicly defendable practice, at best only vaguely sugarcoated.
“at the crack of dawn, men and women assembled outside the meat plants. sometimes crowd of hundreds or even thousands would wait for the straw bosses and employment agents to appear and chose new employees. representatives of the company went out into the crowd and picked those that seemed the strongest or most skilled. there was no bargaining as to wages or hours; the agent simply tapped the man or woman he chose and told them, ‘come along!’”
simultaneously, as stefanoni shows, this "job" is one of the rare ones that don't even require the ritual of authorization or a supposed assumption of fair employability. the very practice itself allows that the command transfers directly, even if we are speaking about a far less authorized system. being a butcher is one of the last jobs anyone ever willingly chooses, which also makes it one of the first jobs with enough audacity to feel free to choose you, to drag you along. only systemized murder has enough pretention to not need to go through the social humiliation ritual every other job naturally has to pass through. finally, the idea of the political arena makes a direct appearance as well: “the slaughterhouse becomes a ‘political space’ because, to echo rancière, it is the subject of conflict, a dispute over the social/political, private/public divide. are meat provisioning and production private or public affairs? what role do animals occupy? does this alter the spatial allocations determined by the prevailing police order?”
returning to sanbonmatsu, deeper in the chapter he complicates the section by bringing in his critique of singer, a section that should be quoted in full. sanbonmatsu's basic point is that death is not only painful if it hurts physically, but that death is harmful because it destroys the being’s entire future.
"i happened to be at this conference, and i attended both panels. when singer’s panel ended, i approached him and asked him how, as a “preference” utilitarian who’d staked his career on the principle that we ought to maximize the preferences of other animals, he could deny that the one preference that animals have above all others is to live. singer curtly replied that i hadn’t shown that animals in fact have such a preference. i responded that an animal will endure even great pain and abuse if she or he believes it will help them live longer. so great is the desire to live that a fox caught in a hunter’s trap may even gnaw off his own limb, to free himself. i cannot recall what singer said in reply. but my feeling at the time, and since, is that there is something wrong with a moral philosophy that purports to care about the “happiness” of a class of beings, whether farmed animals or disabled children, while remaining indifferent to their violent deaths."
there is a bit of a confusion in this section that requires a clarification that this very essay can provide. sanbonmatsu doesn't realize that the very stakes of the conversation rest on the very ability to commit the atrocity. its quite simple, really, the insensivity towards death follows from a basic trap that almost all commentators and observes of and towards death throughout history have held, the idea that since all life is meaningful as it just so happens to exist, but cannot be verified by any post-death process as "wholly significant" in its secondary form, that all life is only valuable so long as it is lived, but equally invaluable at any insignificant moment of death. even if never stated directly by either authors, this is the big hinge, or the big moral heuristic or cognitive dissonance that makes murder seem arbitrary in its ultimate form, and only politically relevant in its specific presentations.
the tragedy of thew world itself can then be allowed to be instrumentalized due to the way in which death presents as something "only related to the world in the brief moment that it happens", and only symbolically loaded by the posteriori realization that the significance of the being has diminished. yet, the basic quality of living and the will to live have been since the 1800s but even since ancient times really disrespected by all who came across it, considering the fact that these very same interpreters who naturally believe that life must be authenticated before it can truly prove itself significant, are the same ones who would be so quick to instrumentalize it in the first place
this then explains the next concept sanbonmatsu turns to attack, the cycle of life. the fact that natural death, ecological decay, composting, predation, and deliberate slaughter are being blurred together by omnivores is precisely because to them life does not contain this mystical function that depoliticizes it. the politicization of "slaughter" turns it away from the politicization of "murder" by a simple arbitrary designation and not much else, given that in both cases the act resembles itself in almost every way. this is obvious, since human murder itself is only problematic to other humans in certain, non-death related instances or problematics. it seems that much of the world has already accepted this heuristic as a basic fact of the world, and that their own fear of death has controversially pushed them to actually support an insensitivity that leads to this illusory conclusion.
sanbonmatsu ends with an interesting idea in regards to this last problem. to be “human” becomes partly defined as “not animal,” and therefore more worthy, more dignified, more killable? not necessarily, because it ends up actually being something along the lines of "more entitled to kill". he says "part of the unique horror of the shoah was the victims’ knowledge that they were being targeted not merely as individuals or families, but as an entire people or race. like other genocides, the shoah therefore inflicted a type of psychological and spiritual suffering that may be unique to human beings, owing to our capacity for complex language and historical understanding.
in all other ways, however, the animals we kill suffer as we do. " in many ways, this is actually a pity-trade more than it is another psychological tactic. the individual may in fact suffer from understanding he is being targeted for something arbitrary as his race, but he also understands that since this is the case, the system is far larger than him, and the death is guaranteed as something that arrives to him through a system of random tagged legibility. the animal, on the other hand, to push the point slightly past sanbonmatsu himself would say, may in one way understand itself as a race, understand the dark reality of intention, even if it has no conceptual schema to comprehend genocide as a cultural event.
however, this same animal is embodied in the vitality of a pure and unquestioned life, unquestioned not in regards to predatory but in regards to its self-value. in this way, the murder of an animal is worse than that of a human, who is actually being offered the psychological comfort of understanding genocide historically before it happens to him. and even to understand that in many ways, genocides are simulations of death and sacrificial rite, accelerators of cultural transformation, and even arbitrary simulacrums that host torture as a base experience of the world - even if and by many ways by necessity an non consensual "invite". the animal is offered no such comforts, serving purely as an economic vehicle, one that points to the non-necessity of life precisely by its self-presentation of harm, its genocidal possibility enacted into a non-determination of lived death.