Studying Burgerland

Kathryn Gillespie’s book The Cow With Ear Tag #1389 is an ethnography of American dairy production replete with poignant reflections on the ethical complexity of this kind of animal studies scholarship. Nowhere is this complexity more obvious than in chapter five, in which Gillespie attends a cull auction, where ‘spent’ dairy cows are sold to slaughter at roughly 5-6 years of age, destined for ‘Burgerland.’ The natural life span of a cow is about 25 years, but as Gillespie writes, the cows sold at the auction looked “ancient,” “their bodies visibly destroyed by years of dairy production” (96). Then the cow tagged with ear tag #1289 enters the ring, emaciated, limping and clearly suffering from mastitis (udder infection, #1 cause of death in dairy cows, bar slaughter). Small as she is, no one bids on her, not even at 35 USD. But rather than be ushered out, out of sight, the cow succumbs to her injuries and sinks to the floor, where she is left to rest, close to death, while the auction proceeds.

Shocked with what they’re seeing, Gillespie and her research buddy (more on buddy system research here) share a look that communicates the kind of bind they find themselves in, which is one that is extremely delimiting in a number of ways. Firstly, they are keenly aware of the fact that they do not belong at the cull auction, which is an extremely masculine space that is not normally accessed by researchers, let alone female ones. Any display of grief or rage would single them out as outsiders, and potentially reinforce the barriers that make it so difficult for scholars to gain access to spaces of dairy production in the first place (more about this in chapter two of the book). Secondly, as an academic, Gillespie acknowledges how unprepared she is to make impulsive decisions – like purchasing a cow for 35 USD – when she almost naturally, and by training, complicates situations by throwing up questions, for example concerning logistics (does the cow fit in her station wagon) and ethics (why this cow, and not the others?). Her task seems to be much more narrowly delineated; “we just needed to focus on the animals in front of us, not thinking, not reacting, just watching” (96).

Yet, for all the ‘passiveness’ involved in her research, Gillespie’s book is a work of activism, in the sense that is an expertly crafted message with clear intent to move – emotionally, as well as politically. Her prose is deliberately unacademic, personal, and visual, thus mobilizing the politics of sight (cf. Pachirat), which seeks to expose the way both physical and media infrastructures conceal and normalize social and animal injustices. Equally savvy, perhaps, is Gillespie’s silence on vegetarianism and veganism, which she only mentions in passing. In a book as personal as hers, I find Gillespie’s silence remarkable, and for me it raises a lot of questions. Should scholars come out as vegetarians or vegans in academic work? What about in more activist writing? What happens, rhetorically, in such a coming out moment? What is at stake, for example in terms of scientific credibility, or moral persuasiveness? It seems to me, ironically, that many vegetarians and vegans share the burden of ‘consumer fragility’ with the proponents of meat and dairy production. Consumer fragility (a term suggested by one of the session's participants, modeled after the notion of white fragility), describes people’s extreme defensiveness when they are exposed to even minor stressors regarding their consumption of meat and dairy. Often, for the sake of diplomacy, or even advocacy, vegans and vegetarians attend to this fragility by mincing their words or by keeping quiet, knowing that their presence alone - especially at the dinner table - can easily be taken as an affront. Such a silence, however, perpetuates the illusion of capitalist realist animal agriculture, the illusion that there is no other way to eat and live, than to eat and live in Burgerland. 

Laura op de Beke (a vegan)

Works Cited

Gillespie, Kathryn. The Cow With Ear Tag #1389. University of Chicago Press, 2018.