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The Eyes of That Cow: Eating Animals and Theorizing Vegetarianism in James Joyce’s Ulysses

Adkins, Peter (2017) The Eyes of That Cow: Eating Animals and Theorizing Vegetarianism in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Humanities, 6 (3). ISSN 2076-0787. (doi:10.3390/h6030046) (KAR id:69332)

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Official URL
https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/h6030046

Abstract

At the end of the nineteenth century more than half of Ireland’s entire land surface was being used for the raising of livestock, most of which was transported through Dublin on its way to England to be slaughtered and eaten. The same period saw the development of a new social phenomena of vegetarianism amongst Ireland’s intellectuals and literary figures. This article focuses on James Joyce’s portrayal of livestock, meat and vegetarianism in Ulysses, examining how the novel engages with the politics of cattle raising, the emergence of industrialized animal slaughter and the ethics of meat eating at the turn of the twentieth century. Attending to the ways in which Joyce both historicizes and theorizes the lives of animals and the production of meat, this article places Ulysses in dialogue with recent writings on animal ethics by Jacques Derrida and J. M. Coetzee and the emergence of what is being termed “vegan studies” to suggest a vegetarian reading of Joyce’s novel.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.3390/h6030046
Uncontrolled keywords: James Joyce; Ulysses; animal studies; modernism; vegetarianism; vegan studies; literary ethics; meat; J. M. Coetzee; Jacques Derrida
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General)
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of English
Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of European Culture and Languages
Depositing User: Peter Adkins
Date Deposited: 06 Sep 2019 10:05 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Feb 2021 13:58 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/69332 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)
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