Narrating Threads of Transgression: Intensive Animal Agriculture in Contemporary Literature.

Since the advent of industrial animal farming in the mid-nineteenth century works of fiction have played a vital role in bringing to light the dynamics of violence resistance and sabotage that inhabit its spaces. This article addresses the latest configuration of this phenomenon examining a selection of twenty-first century novels (among them Isabelle Sorente's 180 jours Deb Olin Unferth's Barn 8 and Nadja Niemeyer's Gegenangriff) that confront the sites of large-scale automated breeding feeding slaughter and processing that are the factory farms of today. At the core of these novels are episodes of transgression – break-ins escapes abductions – that implicate the whole network of actors involved: humans animals machines and matter. Disrupting the flows of bodies the rhythms of conveyor belts and the logistics of transport these episodes highlight not only the rigorous disciplinary power but also the permeability of the boundaries and the fragile interplay of kinesis and stasis that sustain modern meat production. The article thus elucidates how these works crystallize what Georges Bataille characterized as "the chaotic aspect" of abattoirs theorizing an aesthetics of transgression as the hallmark of contemporary factory-farm fiction and the key vector of its socioethical ambitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]