Meat Love: An Ideology of the Flesh is a materialist critique of how contemporary visual culture — from Instagram to fine art — has repackaged our relationship with meat as an ethical, even tender, act of love.
About This Book
In the age of climate catastrophe and corporate agribusiness, a new visual grammar has emerged around meat: pastoral, humane, redemptive. Amber Husain isn't buying it. This illustrated essay dissects the aesthetic codes through which meat is sold back to us — gentrified, dignified, and carefully lit — and asks whether an "ethical" relationship with animal flesh is a genuine political position or a comforting fiction. Drawing on contemporary art, film, advertising, and social media, Husain probes the visual culture of human-animal relations with a critic's precision. The result is a sharp, compact work that reframes debates around food politics, animal ethics, and the limits of love as ideology.
Key Features
- 112 pages of illustrated critical essay drawing on visual sources across art, film, Instagram, and advertising
- Written by Amber Husain
- Published by MACK, 2023
What You'll Discover
- How the visual culture of meat has gentrified — and what that gentrification conceals about power, land, and consumption
- The role of contemporary art and film in constructing a sentimental, aestheticised image of human-animal relations
- Why the call to "love" the animals we eat may reinforce, rather than challenge, the political conditions of industrial farming
- A materialist framework for reading images of food, flesh, and desire as ideological rather than innocent acts of looking
About the Author
Amber Husain is the author of this illustrated essay, published by MACK. Her work engages critically with visual culture, materialism, and the political imagination. [Details available upon request]
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 112
- Dimensions: 125 x 195mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781915743039
- Publisher: MACK
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Critics and theorists working at the intersection of visual culture and food politics, readers interested in animal ethics and ideology, and anyone drawn to sharp, essay-length materialist criticism.