Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Writing The Fleischgeist, Hayley Singer

Animal Studies Journal

This essay has two primary aims: 1) to provide an introductory definition of the concept of the fleischgeist and 2) outline what it means for novelists to ‘write the fleischgeist’. This essay emerges from my own desire, as a writer of fiction, to consider how, practically, I can expose and explore interconnections between carnist and misogynistic violence without lapsing into a conceptual perpetuation of such violence. Coupled with this practical desire is the recognition that there is a rich body of modern and contemporary fiction that makes visible some ways in which the logic of carnivorous patriarchy (or, carnophallogocentrism) plays …