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A review by owlette
Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight by Timothy Pachirat
4.0
I finished this book feeling it was a solid 5 out of 5, but as I started writing this review, I began to notice some weaknesses in his argument. This annoyingly lengthy review is divided into three sections:
- 1. "The art of ethnography" which is just my raving about Pachirat's field work and writing;
- 2. "Are we not entertained?" wherein I discuss Pachirat's politics of sight;
- 3. "Guilt and shame" where I make it all about me by raising how Pachirat missed the opportunity to guilt-trip me into becoming vegan.
## 1) The art of ethnography
First, the details. While working undercover, Pachirat drew a floor diagram spanning two pages laying out the kill floor. This map marks the position of floor workers and supervisors. Across the map snaking are operation line carrying parts of the carcasses. Supplied in the appendices are descriptions of these floor jobs, from "1. Cattle Driver" to "121. Nonproduction Sanitation and Laundry Staff," and various usage of body parts, including "fetal blood and serum," which the author happened to observe the extraction of and describes like a scene from horror novel on page 79. Apparently these auxiliary products keep slaughterhouses afloat these days. (Would have loved a reference cited for this last point, Tim.)
Second, the book has some dramatic moments that I've rarely seen in academic books.
For example, when Pachirat writes his name on the job application, he is fearful of looking overqualified: "I print using sprawling capital letters, afraid that my writing, my spelling, my syntax--something, anything--will betray me (90)." He feels conflicted between getting his leg through the door (after all, he has a dissertation to do) and taking a job away from others who might have more urgent needs for that job. Later when he sits for an interview for a quality control position, he catches himself talking too much. The tension is palpable:
Honestly, these intense moments read like a thriller, except that it's a book published by a university press. Nevertheless, he's unable to open up about everything in the book. I did not expect my heart to be broken by this footnote to Chapter 4: "The role of family in fieldwork, particularly in the kind of fieldwork that I conducted, is one that I regretfully leave aside in this book."
## 2) Are we not entertained?
The book starts with a story about six cattle escaping a slaughterhouse in Omaha, Nebraska, only to be shot by the police. What puzzles Pachirat is how the quality control worker interviewed for the news story declaims her horror at the police's action while failing to register the killing they see and partake in every day at a similar level. He frames this as an instance of cognitive dissonance: Why do they see the shooting as killing but not their jobs in the slaughterhouse?
The rest of the book is about how cognitive dissonance can come from a state of immersion in the sight of killing and access to total visibility. Pachirat achieves a state of total visibility when he moves up the ranks to become a quality control (QC) inspector. The QC has virtually free range over the whole floor due to the demands of his job, giving him that state of total visibility. But Pachirat interprets that his work as QC was subverted by power politics that often came in the way of his work of quality control.
Moreover, the QC is doomed even if they try to do their job in earnest. One of the weekly job duties of quality control is to monitor whether the animals are being slaughtered humanely by going through a checklist of animal-handling audits. Not only are these audits marketing ploys but they still objectify the animals:
That sustained exposure is no guarantee for seeing repugnant acts is evidenced by the news story that opens chapter 1 and by the subsequent chapters narrating Pachirat's undercover experience. The animal rights activist who document slaughterhouse operations would claim that horror and disgust elicited through exposure will mobilize public opinion. But Pachirat argues that these emotive responses are contingent on context:
In a different society where animals are killed in plain sight, horror may not be the expected response (cf. the excerpts from Elias (2000) [b:The Civilizing Process|379701|The Civilizing Process|Norbert Elias|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388291947l/379701._SY75_.jpg|369507] and Tuan (1984) [b:Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets|834611|Dominance and Affection The Making of Pets|Yi-Fu Tuan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347670001l/834611._SX50_.jpg|820226] on pp. 249-251). Pachirat even speculates that a society that bans animal killing might still hide a black market that provides illegal meat and even kills for illegal sport. (Psst, this is exactly what happens in [b:Beastars, Vol. 1|42858205|Beastars, Vol. 1 (Beastars, #1)|Paru Itagaki|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1557052796l/42858205._SX50_.jpg|55792516].)
## 3) Guilt and shame
Radicalization is not the book's explicit aim.
Even though Pachirat never mentions the word vegan or vegetarian--he explicitly states on page 1 that the book will not directly engage in the discourse of animal right and welfare--it's clear where his sympathy lies. Which is why I couldn't help but notice that among the emotions that politics of sight tries to elicit in their exposé campaign, he doesn't include guilt or shame.
Instead, the emotive responses he lists are pity, horror, disgust, and shock. And yes, these are emotions one might feel watching footages captured by animal rights activists. But the list is not exhaustive because none of these categories is interchangeable with guilt or shame (which are also two different things). [**] And surely, these footages, if they are meant to be tools of normative reflection, are intended to arouse feelings of guilt and/or shame, i.e. moral discomfort with ourselves.
By omitting to mention these two feelings, he avoids engaging in the (im)morality of meat consumption. Even in the three-paragraph passage where he talks about his argument with his friend over the moral responsibility of consumers over the killing of animals, he drops the argument by making this sloppy statement: "[p]erhaps there are at least some who would be willing to ... accept moral responsibility for the killing as a condition of benefiting from it, as long as they could continue to be shielded from any direct contact with or experience with it (161)."
That doesn't sound like taking moral responsibility: you can't have your cake and eat it too!
I think he avoids taking on this angle because he's a social scientist, not a moral philosopher.
This is particularly clear when notes quite cynically that we've cheated our way through history by putting a lid on the ugly, the odious, and the repugnant instead of becoming better people qualitatively: "[w]hat are referred to as development and progress relies on the distancing and concealment of morally and physically repugnant practices rather than their elimination or transformation (11)." Even when he thinks of political transformation, he's mostly concerned of its fallibility because the kind of society brought about by politics of society is, for better or for worse, a tyranny of opinion.
I'm kind of disappointed, but in a gleeful way, because it feels like he's letting me off the hook. Harnessing his firsthand experience, he could have developed a normative theory that puts me into a deep sense of shame more powerfully than [a:Peter Singer|12397|Peter Singer|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1255667717p2/12397.jpg] ever could.
But I don't have a Ph.D. in political science or philosophy, so what the hell do I know?
- 1. "The art of ethnography" which is just my raving about Pachirat's field work and writing;
- 2. "Are we not entertained?" wherein I discuss Pachirat's politics of sight;
- 3. "Guilt and shame" where I make it all about me by raising how Pachirat missed the opportunity to guilt-trip me into becoming vegan.
## 1) The art of ethnography
First, the details. While working undercover, Pachirat drew a floor diagram spanning two pages laying out the kill floor. This map marks the position of floor workers and supervisors. Across the map snaking are operation line carrying parts of the carcasses. Supplied in the appendices are descriptions of these floor jobs, from "1. Cattle Driver" to "121. Nonproduction Sanitation and Laundry Staff," and various usage of body parts, including "fetal blood and serum," which the author happened to observe the extraction of and describes like a scene from horror novel on page 79. Apparently these auxiliary products keep slaughterhouses afloat these days. (Would have loved a reference cited for this last point, Tim.)
Second, the book has some dramatic moments that I've rarely seen in academic books.
For example, when Pachirat writes his name on the job application, he is fearful of looking overqualified: "I print using sprawling capital letters, afraid that my writing, my spelling, my syntax--something, anything--will betray me (90)." He feels conflicted between getting his leg through the door (after all, he has a dissertation to do) and taking a job away from others who might have more urgent needs for that job. Later when he sits for an interview for a quality control position, he catches himself talking too much. The tension is palpable:
There's a silence in the room. I am on dangerous ground, but the conversation is intoxicating. It is more than just the desire to impress them so that I can get the job. After working in the complete silence of the cooler, I have an uncontrollable urge to show the management that we are not just stupid, mindless machines turning our gears day after day, to show them that we too have thoughts and feelings (171).
Honestly, these intense moments read like a thriller, except that it's a book published by a university press. Nevertheless, he's unable to open up about everything in the book. I did not expect my heart to be broken by this footnote to Chapter 4: "The role of family in fieldwork, particularly in the kind of fieldwork that I conducted, is one that I regretfully leave aside in this book."
## 2) Are we not entertained?
The book starts with a story about six cattle escaping a slaughterhouse in Omaha, Nebraska, only to be shot by the police. What puzzles Pachirat is how the quality control worker interviewed for the news story declaims her horror at the police's action while failing to register the killing they see and partake in every day at a similar level. He frames this as an instance of cognitive dissonance: Why do they see the shooting as killing but not their jobs in the slaughterhouse?
The rest of the book is about how cognitive dissonance can come from a state of immersion in the sight of killing and access to total visibility. Pachirat achieves a state of total visibility when he moves up the ranks to become a quality control (QC) inspector. The QC has virtually free range over the whole floor due to the demands of his job, giving him that state of total visibility. But Pachirat interprets that his work as QC was subverted by power politics that often came in the way of his work of quality control.
Moreover, the QC is doomed even if they try to do their job in earnest. One of the weekly job duties of quality control is to monitor whether the animals are being slaughtered humanely by going through a checklist of animal-handling audits. Not only are these audits marketing ploys but they still objectify the animals:
The result of the audit is to transform a physical confrontation with the killing of live creatures into a technical process with precise measurements of when the procedure counts as humane and ethical and when it does not. The inspector is looking directly at the animals; he or she is listening to their voices, but they are seen and heard only as criteria within a technical process, as data point.
That sustained exposure is no guarantee for seeing repugnant acts is evidenced by the news story that opens chapter 1 and by the subsequent chapters narrating Pachirat's undercover experience. The animal rights activist who document slaughterhouse operations would claim that horror and disgust elicited through exposure will mobilize public opinion. But Pachirat argues that these emotive responses are contingent on context:
The very question 'For who could stand the sight?' becomes historically intelligible only in the context of a 'reign of opinion' dependent for its existence on the continued operation of distance and concealment, the continued hiding from sight of what is classified and repugnant (252).
In a different society where animals are killed in plain sight, horror may not be the expected response (cf. the excerpts from Elias (2000) [b:The Civilizing Process|379701|The Civilizing Process|Norbert Elias|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388291947l/379701._SY75_.jpg|369507] and Tuan (1984) [b:Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets|834611|Dominance and Affection The Making of Pets|Yi-Fu Tuan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347670001l/834611._SX50_.jpg|820226] on pp. 249-251). Pachirat even speculates that a society that bans animal killing might still hide a black market that provides illegal meat and even kills for illegal sport. (Psst, this is exactly what happens in [b:Beastars, Vol. 1|42858205|Beastars, Vol. 1 (Beastars, #1)|Paru Itagaki|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1557052796l/42858205._SX50_.jpg|55792516].)
## 3) Guilt and shame
Radicalization is not the book's explicit aim.
Even though Pachirat never mentions the word vegan or vegetarian--he explicitly states on page 1 that the book will not directly engage in the discourse of animal right and welfare--it's clear where his sympathy lies. Which is why I couldn't help but notice that among the emotions that politics of sight tries to elicit in their exposé campaign, he doesn't include guilt or shame.
Instead, the emotive responses he lists are pity, horror, disgust, and shock. And yes, these are emotions one might feel watching footages captured by animal rights activists. But the list is not exhaustive because none of these categories is interchangeable with guilt or shame (which are also two different things). [**] And surely, these footages, if they are meant to be tools of normative reflection, are intended to arouse feelings of guilt and/or shame, i.e. moral discomfort with ourselves.
By omitting to mention these two feelings, he avoids engaging in the (im)morality of meat consumption. Even in the three-paragraph passage where he talks about his argument with his friend over the moral responsibility of consumers over the killing of animals, he drops the argument by making this sloppy statement: "[p]erhaps there are at least some who would be willing to ... accept moral responsibility for the killing as a condition of benefiting from it, as long as they could continue to be shielded from any direct contact with or experience with it (161)."
That doesn't sound like taking moral responsibility: you can't have your cake and eat it too!
I think he avoids taking on this angle because he's a social scientist, not a moral philosopher.
This is particularly clear when notes quite cynically that we've cheated our way through history by putting a lid on the ugly, the odious, and the repugnant instead of becoming better people qualitatively: "[w]hat are referred to as development and progress relies on the distancing and concealment of morally and physically repugnant practices rather than their elimination or transformation (11)." Even when he thinks of political transformation, he's mostly concerned of its fallibility because the kind of society brought about by politics of society is, for better or for worse, a tyranny of opinion.
Concerned with the subjecting power of a generalized gaze, some will dismiss the ideal, like vision itself, as a trap. Others, placing their faith in a weight of opinion and the immutable timelessness of pity, will energetically advance the project of bringing every dark thing to light, demolishing every distance between what is seen and what is hidden (254).
I'm kind of disappointed, but in a gleeful way, because it feels like he's letting me off the hook. Harnessing his firsthand experience, he could have developed a normative theory that puts me into a deep sense of shame more powerfully than [a:Peter Singer|12397|Peter Singer|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1255667717p2/12397.jpg] ever could.
But I don't have a Ph.D. in political science or philosophy, so what the hell do I know?