poetry with a pre-poetry ramble about "understanding" opression. :)

[olly stearn]

This is a poem form the "institute for critical animal studies" journal, i found it particularly moving. this to my mind is the best example, i have come across, of the coming together two potentially very moving things. the kind of writing that is poetry and the oppression subjugation and harm that many non-human animals live every day.  for me this poem does not just talk about the disconnect between people that directly consume non-humans, altho i think this is the main focus, it also talks about, o atleast that is what i took form it, the disconnect that exists between all humans by virtue of our privilege as humans, a privilage that exists in a speciesest society. that is, we are fundamentally disconnected form this disconnect between the usre of non-humans and individuals that are used. we human do not have to live with the direct consequences (outer than the emotional and limited material deprivation) of this disconnect, only the non-humans do. in light of this i think it wise to be cautious in claiming that we "understand" this disconnect or the oppression, subjugation and harm that non-human animals live. a similar and explanatory situation might be found in male feminists (or more correct: individuals in the feminist movement that are not subject to the oppression that women or those culturally judged to be in that group are. i say this to take in to account of individuals in the feminist movement that are not subject to the oppression that women are but who do not identify as men). while individuals in the feminist movement that are not oppressed by patriarchal society can "understand", in theoretical and to an extent emotional snese, the oppression that those who are oppressed in this way are faced with they do not live it,experience it, have there consensus shaped by it in the same way (i say same was because patriarchal society and these oppressions do impact on those that are not directly subjected to them, but in a different way) and so it would be, i think, risky for those that are not subjected to this oppression to say they "understand" it.


so in the case of non-human oppression I think we can understand it to a point but we will never understand it in one dimension that it can be understood in, that dimension is the lived experience of it and I think this warrants caution when saying we "understand" non-human oppression. 

but enough of my fambelings..... 

i hope you enjoy the poem as much as i do

http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/3_B... 

 

POETRY 

Plattered Beings 

Alejandra Maria Bozzolasco 

 

 

Introduction 

 

Human beings most closely interact with non-humans when they consume them.  Yet, the 

vast majority of the meat-eating human population is unaware that they are ingesting beings 

whose lives were violently torn from them in order to become a plattered delicacy.  This 

poem is an  examination of the plight of the non-human oppressed and the need for humanity 

to acknowledge and recognize their blame.  By highlighting the disconnect that exists 

between those who use non-humans to satisfy culinary desires and the beings who are 

consumed in relative invisibility, this poem is both a creative catharsis for the author and an 

outcry for the voiceless.   

 

Plattered Beings 

 

Sentiments discarded like offal from the slaughterhouse 

Unwanted remnants of rationality gone awry.   

Solitary beings languish behind cages dripping with blood - unspoken thoughts. 

Beasties trenchantly stare with magnifying glass eyes, knowingly.   

               Voiceless. 

 

Organs dot the landscape, unnoticed. 

Manufactured doom – living sustenance for the masses. 

Vegetalized beings - living, breathing, walking heads of lettuce – saturated in blood. 

Corpses blight humanity.  Billions.  

                Unseen. 

 

Screams – screened, hidden behind archaic philosophies. 

Prisoners of selective privilege.   

Teeth gnashing in desperation – hunger, greed. 

Mechanized murder – disassembly lines into infinity. 

              Tortured. 

 

Sinews torn from the living bone, digested by the deadened heart. 

Invisibility breeds murderous potentiality. 

Humanity is guilty, complicit in absentia. 

Saboteurs – abattoirs. 

           Objectified. 

 

Extrinsic value trumps intrinsic worth. 

Assuaging desires, taste overrides morality – defines humanity. 

Death abounds – blood runs – ruins the rivers, clogging arteries. 

Crashing, crushing – skulls, bones, societies collapse, the bodies’ demise. 

                                                             Finis. 

 

 

Alejandra Maria Bozzolasco is a Ph.D. Student at Montclair State University, Department of Earth and 

Environmental Studies. Contact details: 1 Normal Avenue – Mallory Hall Montclair, NJ 07043.  

E-mail: [e-mail] or [e-mail] Tel: [phone] 

Journal for Critical Animal Studies, Volume IX, Issue 3, 2011 (ISSN1948-352X)