“Off-animals,” as they are called by some managers of North American pork production, are the biological refuse of agribusiness’s efforts to realize standardized hog life and death. Ranging from aged boars to misshapen pigs, evolving attempts to industrially slaughter these creatures for meat has led to a shadow infrastructure of killing that, in turn, underpins some of the world’s largest factory farms. Arching through and beyond Alex Blanchette’s recent book, Porkopolis: American Animality, Standardized Life, and the Factory Farm (Duke University Press, 2020), this talk outlines an ethnography of these animals to offer new lines of sight onto the waning state of industrial labor and value in the United States today.

Hosts: Center for Biosocial Inquiries / Centre for Environmental Humanities

Please send an email to Mia Korsbæk (korsbaek@cas.au.dk) to register and receive a Zoom link (not to CEH email).