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C rusoe's abattoir: cannibalism and animal slaughter in R obinson C rusoe
Author(s) -
Mackintosh Alex
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
critical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.111
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1467-8705
pISSN - 0011-1562
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8705.2011.02003.x
Subject(s) - sympathy , cannibalism , power (physics) , sovereignty , animal ethics , discipline , environmental ethics , law and economics , politics , sociology , political science , law , philosophy , biology , ecology , social psychology , psychology , physics , quantum mechanics , larva
Robinson Crusoe (1719) is well known as a novel about cannibalism. Yet it is just as concerned with the slaughter of animals. This article argues that cannibalism and animal slaughter in Robinson Crusoe must be understood in tandem as highly politicised practices and considered in the light of the F oucauldian distinction between sovereign and disciplinary power. As an allegory for the foundation of political sovereignty – often linked in the novel to the sovereignty of humans over other animals – the novel reveals that effective management of humans, like that of livestock, requires a combination of sovereign and disciplinary power. Both types of power are shown to operate indiscriminately on the bodies and minds of humans and animals. As such, colonial power is shown to replicate the logic of cannibalism itself, which shocks precisely because of its failure to distinguish between the two. Finally, the ‘sympathy’ expressed by C rusoe in his dealings with animals must be understood as an intrinsic part of this strategy of domination through pastoral power. Written at the start of the age of sympathy, the novel therefore offers a cautionary corrective to a narrative of ever‐greater ‘humanity’ in our dealings with the brute creation.