Among the prevailing arguments today against factory farming is the refutation that the dominion passage from the Book of Genesis authorizes this practice. The argument essentially rejects the extension of the dominion doctrine to cover this widespread practice even though it was made to serve at one time (and for many continues to serve) as its governing reason or explanation from a theological standpoint.

Within the context of present-day economic overproduction and overconsumption, this method of food production has been explained as belonging to a scarcity mentality that is at work behind a ‘new poverty’ that simultaneously produces scarcity and excess, as distinct from the ‘old poverty’ that simply suffered under scarcity (Berger).

Another originating ‘why’ for the human activity of factory farming and the suffering it produces has been ascribed to ‘philosophical culpability’ that elevates human dignity at the expense of non-human animals, human dignity being that “supreme bourgeois concept” (Adorno in Flodin, 2011).

Equally plausible (as well as generous in this case) is an application of Hanlon’s razor which states the principle, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

At the same time, it seems to me, to continue to give the benefit of the doubt on this issue wouldn’t be any less “stupid” (not to mention unsolicitous to non-human animals). That is why I think something closer to what Conrad concluded in his search for meaning in colonialism is what lies at the heart of factory farming as it is practiced and permitted to practice today. Visually, it looks to me like something out of a Wyndham Lewis painting.

Note that I just made reference to two art things. Hopefully this qualifies me to talk about factory farming in a way that may be understood by others. (But is this not a suspect point to begin with, not the least reason being an abundant measure of doubt that a necessary subjective receptivity in this case exists to the fact that representation of suffering is not in itself the cessation of that which causes suffering but is a mediated call for cessation, which then is supposed to compel honest self-reflection and action? Given the evidence of this doubt, what good does the mediated expression do? Apologetic flourishes aside, how is it not at bottom just another technology that serves only to widen the gulf between our destructive actions and our chances at redemption? Yet, if we regard it instead as an alibi for continuance of the practice, does this imply a more direct culpability? I would say not, and here the use of the ‘as such’ defense becomes apparent for what it is, which is insurance against culpability.)

But if one insists on the point of mediation, the mediation of biblical authority to account for this practice is problematic because it can and arguably has been (mis)read in the dystopian direction of ‘more’ domination, hence ‘more’ suffering that attends it as something already implied. The added layers of technological mediation through automation distances producers and consumers that much more from this surplus suffering experienced not by the human animal whose ‘hidden’ suffering is shown to him through artistic rendering but which suffering consists in the unmediated repression of non-human animals that stems directly from the subordination of all times to the dominance of one time under which there is actual rule by dominance. So, a double dominance. And not even the good kind of dominance where you enjoy being dominated but a dumbed-down dominance that imposes itself as only it can.

The fact of misuse of biblical authority suggests it as not an originating cause of factory farming in a legitimate sense, in the phenomenological sense that seeks to discover an originating provenance and spiritual source in all human activity. Husserl already explicated the constructed nature of such activity in The Origin of Geometry, the manuscript for which was written in 1936 (the same year the Dimensionist Manifesto was signed in Paris). Separately, Swedish philosopher Camilla Flodin explicates from Adorno the second nature or constructedness of Enlightenment, saying it implies an underlying consciousness of suffering. But if, among the things of consciousness that are implied, if suffering is what’s implied, again, this is not human-animal suffering but the suffering of the non-human-animal whose source and provenance of is not ‘mediated’ in an ‘as such’ way but stems directly from human activity.

If it is the case that factory farming has no legitimate theological basis, and shares not a part either in art or in mediated society, and if it’s observed further that its direct impact falls outside the sphere restricted to humans and human activity in terms of consciousness, then those activities and corresponding durations would seem to be uncovered. Man has overstepped his provenance, an illegitimate move made explicit where it is denied cover by the ‘legitimacy’ of the Genesis narrative. And I suspect if you were to put further pressure on the term ‘illegitimate’ you’d find it runs through as an originating truth for the whole enterprise, which is to say what’s already visible in the automation process, that there is no ‘father’ but only a reflection of a particular type of man who, in trying to outrun his nature, becomes more pronounced as that, evidenced by the fact that his unceasing activity makes redemption less and less possible at the same time that he cites biblical authority. On the other hand, if these two moments can be talked about precisely because they have been mediated/rendered available to subjective receptivity, this isn’t a guarantee of its truth value so much as its constructedness. There might be some promise in that.

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