School of Culture and Communication - Theses

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An/aestheticizing carnage: the politics of 'meat' as an image

Mittas, Dina ( 2016)

This thesis examines the representation and cultural construction of ‘meat’ as an image, exploring histories of sacrificial spectacle (real to virtual) and tracing a shift from meat’s representation as a subject in art, to its presentation as art. Aesthetical, political and psychoanalytic theory is brought to bear on meat-images from Goya to Gaga, in order to explore the anaesthetizing effects of aestheticizing carnage; the hybridization of meat’s sexual and violent connotations; the reduction of bodies to meat as a measure of political power; and the separation of ethical from aesthetical value in meat’s material and symbolic use. Practical work created in conjunction with this thesis but not included as part of the dissertation, is presented in the Prologue in the form of digitally printed collage. This study proposes that a contemporary ‘carno-scopophilia’ (or ‘love of looking at meat’) engenders a growing desensitization toward ‘the pain of others’ (Sontag: 2003) that calls for an ethical re-consideration of aesthetical constructs.