What is meat? Is it simply food to consume, or a metaphor for our own bodies? Can "bloody" vegan burgers, petri dish beef, live animals, or human milk be categorized as meat? In pursuing these questions, the contributors to Meat! trace the shifting boundaries of the meanings of meat across time, geography, and cultures. In studies of chicken, fish, milk, barbecue, fake meat, animal sacrifice, cannibalism, exotic meat, frozen meat, and other manifestations of meat, they highlight meat's entanglements with race, gender, sexuality, and disability. From the imperial politics embedded in labeling canned white tuna as "the chicken of the sea" to the relationship between beef bans, yoga, and bodily purity in Hindu nationalist politics, the contributors demonstrate how meat is an ideal vantage point from which to better understand transnational circuits of power and ideology as well as the histories of colonialism, ableism, and sexism.
Contributors. Neel Ahuja, Irina Aristarkhova, Sushmita Chatterjee, Mel Y. Chen, Kim Q. Hall, Jennifer A. Hamilton, Anita Mannur, Elspeth Probyn, Parama Roy, Banu Subramaniam, Angela Willey, Psyche Williams-Forson
Industry Reviews
"Meat is power, meat is politics. By expanding the definitional terrain of the word, the authors in this collection also reimagine the scope of food and animal studies and provide much-needed connective tissue (pun not intended) for future work in the field. This book is a game changer. Period." -- Sharon Patricia Holland, author of * The Erotic Life of Racism *
"A new and provocative engagement with the material and symbolic dimensions of meat within a transnational frame, this collection exfoliates meat's various layers, not to uncover an essential truth, but to examine meat as a dynamic, multiple, and unstable category. It is less about what meat is than it is about what meat does. It is precisely this dimension that renders Meat! an important scholarly advance in cultural studies, food studies, and gender, women, queer, and feminist studies." -- Martin F. Manalansan IV, coeditor of * Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader *
"In provocative and playful essays, diverse authors draw on established experts in such fields as colonial and postcolonial studies, transnational analysis, feminist science studies, queer theory, critical race theory, animal rights studies, and disability studies. . . . Most essays cross boundaries, too, in subject matter, disciplinary orientation, and methodology (such as moving from discursive to practical analysis), requiring proficiency with context-switching, making this both a challenging and rewarding read. Recommended. Graduate students and faculty." -- S. M. Weiss * Choice *
"Few books assemble critical writings from a transnational, intersectional, and postcolonial perspective. Meat! fills this gap.... Feminist scholars will no doubt find this edited volume useful and interesting." -- Elisabeth Abergel * Atlantis *
"The uniqueness of Meat! resides in reuniting scholars, many of them working on regions outside the Euro-Western world, in order to provocatively push the boundaries of what ethical practices and lives entail." -- Valeria Meiller * ISLE *
