Book Review: Tender is The Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
“He wishes he could anaesthetize himself and live without feeling anything. Act automatically, observe, breathe and nothing more. See everything, understand and not talk. But the memories are there, they remain with him.”
I know this book is supposed to teach us something about humanity. Something about the potential dystopia where humans are raised to be cattle. Where there were two kinds of humans. The ones with first and last names, and the ones who were called “heads”.
The book is entirely written in the point of view of this man Tejo, who works in a “special meat” processing plant in a world where all animals have supposedly caught some kind of disease and cannot be eaten and hence feared and eliminated.
I would not go into detail of the dehumanisation of the human cattle or the blasé way that most people in the world seems to treat their “special meat”. I will not talk about how there are many disturbing things seen in just the first chapter.
I would say that the book in itself tries to be some form of allegory about how as humans, we eat others. Not in the way of cannibalism, but in a way where through capitalism, we feast ourselves on the labour, pain and torture of our fellow human beings who might be below the rungs of the ladder that we find ourselves born into.
Think sweatshop workers who employ children who make less than a dollar a day for your favourite sweater.
Think malnourished miners who find the minerals needed for our computer chips, smartphones, and even makeup.
Think of the construction workers who make less than half of what we make in a week while toiling away at building our apartments, often in great danger and less than sufficient safety precautions.
And this is how we eat our fellow human beings. Not literally but kinda.
