Beyond the Cages: Possibilities and Limitations of Reimagining Livestock in Literature

This concluding chapter reflects critically whether and how literary animal studies readings may contribute to human-animal relationships beyond the page. Whereas literary and cultural studies perspectives cannot easily formulate their own philosophical ethics, they can shed light on the distinctive potential of literary narrative to contribute to a “deindustrialization of the imagination”: inviting readers to take imaginative leaps into unfamiliar perspectives of the millions of chickens, pigs, or cows, narrative may transform these masses of “livestock” into individuals—at least within readers’ minds. Reading and studying science and speculative fiction directs our attention to these potentially transformative disruptions: cows escaping the slaughterhouse, biotech pigs sharing a dining table with humans, or AI-creatures replacing human narrators. In their distance to assumed reality, literary thought experiments challenge normative value hierarchies, shake the anthropological machine, experiment with alternative models of relationality, and thereby expand readers’ senses for possibilities. In the face of the manifold planetary challenges of the twenty-first century, farmed animals will continue to take second row behind ecological, medical, and economic progress. Therefore, practicing how to imagine alternative futures with farmed animals that do not perpetuate patterns of violence becomes all the more important; and literary narratives provide imaginary platforms for that retraining of our imaginations.