"Not Just Words": Defined and Redefined Conceptions of Language in Agustina Bazterrica's Tender is the Flesh 65 views

Agustina Bazterrica's Tender is the Flesh was first published in Argentina in 2017 after winning the Premio Clarin de Novela award. It is a dystopian echo of novels like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906), situated within the slaughterhouse and concerned with the violent reduction of the living creatures within. In this thesis, I focus on how Bazterrica intensely examines the language that legitimizes the meat industry, seeking to expose how the system relies on and functions through colloquial language. I first briefly illuminate the tradition of animal conscious writings, including activist writings, classic literature, modern fiction, and foundational critical animal studies texts, in order to situate Bazterrica’s engagement with themes of humanization and animalization. I then establish how speech operates as a measure of value in Tender is the Flesh and illustrate how language in the novel both echoes and diverts from that of the Orwellian dystopian tradition. I trace this through the main character Marcos’s verbal complicity and his divergent perceptions of his own words and those of others. Finally, I show how Bazterrica’s unique strategy of animating words—distinct from examples in other slaughterhouse novels and works of dystopian fiction—affects Marcos, the reader, and the world at large. My conclusion attempts to reconcile the function of words in Tender is the Flesh with the lived reality of our world today.

MA (Master of Arts)

slaughterhouse novel; language; transformation; Agustina Bazterrica; George Orwell; dehumanization; animalization; dystopian; animal welfare; vegetarianism; factory farming; animal agriculture; meat consumption; cannibalism

English

All rights reserved by the author (no additional license for public reuse)

2026-04-29