Violence and the consumption of bodies in Tender is the Flesh, by Agustina Bazterrica

Abstract

The book Tender is the Flesh, by Argentine writer Agustina Bazterrica, depicts a society in which a virus has spread among animals across the planet, making their flesh deadly to humans. Pressured by the meat industry, governments across the world sanction the breeding and reproduction of human beings as animals for slaughter and we are gradually introduced to the inner workings of a society where cannibalism is legalized. This article seeks to analyze this dystopian narrative through the lens of capitalist realism as proposed by Mark Fisher and discuss the instrumentalization of language and the representation of gender violence in the book considering the concept of absent referent as applied by Carol J. Adams. As a work of contemporary Latin American speculative fiction, we seek to investigate the parallels the book establishes with current social configurations and reflect on social roles often associated with the dystopian genre.