FIELDCLUB

Whey To Go: On The Hominid Appropriation of the Pig Function
2009

Paper Co-authored by Robin Mackay, Kenna Hernly and Paul Chaney by invitation for Antennae – Journal of Nature in Visual Culture. Illustrated by Paul Chaney

Sample text:

'Whatever the cosmetic resemblances, the secret of the pig’s close relationship with the human lies in the fact that both species boast an augmented potentiality with regard to feeding. Arguably the most important of our many shared traits is our one-chambered stomach and uncomplicated digestive tract, which grants us both membership to that exclusive class, omnivores. But whereas human omniverousness is culturally circumscribed, the pig exhibits an egregious want of critical faculties. Consequently, our feeling of proximity to the pig cannot but be accompanied by a simultaneous revulsion. This gustatory exaptation, which informs the derisory folk-image of the pig as an ignoble glutton ready to devour any and all waste product, nourishes our sense of its uncanny nature, as an animal at once disturbingly proximate to us yet falling drastically short of human refinement. And yet (excepting cultures where it is anathematised as a two-faced – non-ruminant but cloven-hoofed – deceiver) the pig is forgiven its gluttony, as it alchemically transforms anything-edible-whatsoever into tasty nutrition for humans.'

'...[we] have seen that the radically omniverous pig we love to despise – the ‘greedy pig’ – is largely an artefact of Extravagance, a cultural animal co-evolving with, and catering for the appetites of, industrialised and urbanised humans. Although it has ancient roots, the Pig Function was fully developed only during early capitalism, through an opportunistic harnessing of the animal’s latent potentialities.

The Pig Function, therefore, cannot be said to ‘belong’ to the pig at all. Actually-existing pigs, far from being – as in the popular imagination – the very model of an uncritically omnivorous creature enthusiastic to hoover up every kind of trash, whether whey powder or other animals’ excrement – merely incarnate a function nurtured by mankind. Mankind, however, is destined to usurp the pig’s role and incarnate this function itself – because pigs have no spending power. Therefore, so long as pigs monopolise the function that bears their name, they prevent it from becoming a locus for the extraction of surplus value. In short, as fat as it may be, the pig is an intolerable retard when it comes to expansion. A hostile takeover is well overdue, in order that the Pig Function fulfil its true economic potential.'

Sample Illustration – Historical Development of Extravagance in the Pig Function: Sections 4 and 5, Mid 19th Century to Mid 20th Century.