The Slaughterhouse from a Feminist Perspective: Violence, Labor, and the Backgrounding of Nature

Abstract

This study analyzes the slaughterhouse, one of the most closed-off spaces of the modern industrial system, as a regime of power in which violence, labor, and nature are institutionally rendered invisible. The main problem addressed is how the spatial and symbolic isolation of production processes in the slaughterhouse affects the generation of social indifference and ethical distancing. The theoretical framework of the study is built upon Val Plumwood’s concept of “backgrounding” (2017) and Carol J. Adams’s notion of the “absent referent” (2013).

Within the scope of the analysis, the analysis examines how the slaughterhouse's organizational structure keeps dependent bodies—animals, precarious workers, and ecological elements—at the center of material production while simultaneously marginalizing them on symbolic and ethical levels. Drawing on Timothy Pachirat’s (2011) conceptualization of “ethical distance,” the study examines how the act of killing is rendered routine through technical rationalization and an extreme division of labor. Furthermore, within the frameworks of Joan Tronto’s (1993) “privileged irresponsibility” and Lori Gruen’s (2015) “entangled empathy,” the article demonstrates how the slaughterhouse's technical order suspends the principles of care ethics and creates a space of emotional disconnection.

The main findings reveal that the slaughterhouse is not merely a food production facility but a biopolitical space where practices of exploitation intersect along the axes of class, gender, and species. In conclusion, the article defines the slaughterhouse as a structural model of denial in which dependent beings are both exploited and excluded from public recognition, emphasizing the methodological necessity for feminism to develop an intersectional analysis that transcends species boundaries.