Theoretical Framework: Advancing and Enacting a Critical Posthumanism

Abstract

Critical posthumanism provides the overarching theoretical impulse for this book, while the practical and analytical framework is inspired primarily by Foucault in combination with social practice theories. Critical posthumanism, as described by Cudworth and also Cudworth and Hobden, addresses what some scholars perceive as a prevailing human-centrism in certain accounts of posthumanism. In this chapter, I provide a broadly contextualised explication of critical posthumanism before introducing Foucault’s work and clarifying how it aligns with this explicitly emancipatory approach. I then articulate what Foucault’s theorisations on power, knowledge, language, discipline, sexuality, and ethics contribute to a study of meat’s persistence in social practices, and how I apply these to critically explore the persistent edibility of food animals among self-identified producers and consumers of ethical and sustainable meat.