Book review: "Tender is the flesh", by Agustina Bazterrica

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This is probably the most disturbing book I have read so far, and it is because it poses a terrible dystopian future, which taking into account our limitations as a species, and our complexities as a society, does not sound entirely impossible, and in fact the more I see the news, it seems more possible to me if now we get to be in the initial premise of the book, which really terrifies me.

The story poses a future in which all animals become carriers of a deadly virus for humans, so humanity stops consuming animal meat, stops having pets, and in general ceases all kinds of contact with animals in general. People even go out with umbrellas, to prevent the excrement of some bird that flies by from falling on them, and thus accidentally contracting the virus.

As a consequence, humanity becomes vegan out of necessity and has to find a way to replace animals in all the usual activities they used to be a part of. The issue of food becomes controversial, and given the forced absence of the most abundant source of protein, meat of animal origin, there is much debate about the possible long-term consequences for humanity.

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Little by little, cases of cannibalism begin to occur, and the subject is soon discussed publicly, and little by little, in the long run, the consumption of meat of human origin is authorized and regulated. People are raised for consumption, but they are called "cattle", and norms are established to dehumanize them, and make the implications of their consumption morally acceptable, and the world thus solves the lack of animal meat, and replaces it with "cattle" , even in sports activities such as hunting.

It is in this context that the story of our protagonist unfolds, the main manager of one of the main "cattle" slaughterhouses in a city, who experiences a marital separation triggered by the death of his little son that his wife has not been able to overcome, and a series of internal conflicts by not consuming meat, but dedicating to its processing for human consumption.

Through this protagonist, his work and his life, the author presents this new reality to the reader in an extremely explicit and relentless way.

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How the cattle are raised, marketed, and slaughtered, among many other things, are explained to us in great detail. Details that if applied to cattle, as we currently know them, would not disturb us so much, but knowing that it refers to people, takes on a totally different dimension. Even new cooking recipes are proposed from the parts of the human body, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

The book, by normalizing in this dystopian future, applying to people what we see today as "normal" that applies to many animals, forces us to see our relationship with animals in another way, at the same time that it highlights many aspects of human nature that, most likely, we do not usually reflect on.

Our ability to rationalize almost anything, the pitfalls of the intellect, among other topics, are presented here and force us to reflect on human nature. And they make us think about our great adaptability in a whole new way.

The book presents us with a society that has normalized things that at first glance seem impossible to normalize, but there are recorded cases of cannibalism as a means of survival, perhaps the best known being the one that inspired the films "Los supervivientes de los Andes" (The Survivors of the Andes) and " Alive" (¡Viven!)

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In these movies based on real events, the survivors of a plane crash in the Andes choose to feed on the corpses of their fellow passengers in order to survive, while they are rescued. Does this allow us to affirm that we could normalize the consumption of human meat if we were presented with a reality like the one planted in the book? That's hard to say, and even chilling, to say the least, to think about.

The book, while extremely disturbing, makes us aware of our relationship with animals, and strongly questions our morality and our values as a society.

And although today we have not normalized the consumption of human meat, and I hope we never have to consider it, the mentality and social and consumer mechanisms that in the novel made such a decision possible, do exist today, and are behind more things than which we would like to acknowledge.

And that should worry us, because the society portrayed in the book is not utopian, it is real, and it is the one we live in today, but adapting to extreme circumstances, to which hopefully in reality we never have to adapt.


©bonzopoe, 2022.

Thank you very much for reading this post and dedicating a moment of your time. Until next time and remember to leave a comment.

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