"He lies down in the hammock and tries to sleep. A commercial plays again and again in his mind. A woman who's beautiful but dressed conservatively is putting dinner on the table for her three children and husband. She looks at the camera and says: "I serve my family special food, it's the same meat as always, but tastier." The whole family smiles and eats their dinner. The government, his government, decided to resignify the product. They gave human meat the name "special meat". Instead of just "meat", now there's "special tenderloin", "special cutlets", "special kidneys". He doesn't call it special meat. He uses technical words to refer to what is a human but will never be a person, to what is always a product. To the number of heads to be processed, to the lot waiting in the unloading yard, to the slaughter line that must run in a constant and orderly manner, to the excrement that needs to be sold for manure, to the offal sector. No one can call them humans because that would mean giving them an identity. They call them product, or meat, or food."
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Original Language: English
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Translated by Sarah Moses (London: Pushkin Press, 2020)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cannibalism_in_literature
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Cannibalism in literature
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