Language(s), Biopolitics, and the Problem of the (Human) Animal in Joseph D’Lacey’s <i>MEAT</i> (2008) and Vincent Message’s <i>Défaite des maîtres et possesseurs</i> (2016)

This article explores Joseph D’Lacey’s MEAT (2008) and Vincent Message’s Défaite des maîtres et possesseurs (2016) through the prism of biopolitics and language. In the worlds of both novels, humans take the positions of nonhuman animals in industrial animal agriculture—a speculative technique that has been praised by the critical literature. Drawing on Cary Wolfe (2013) and Eva Meijer (2019), this article brings nuance to these discussions: while the novels call into question anthropocentric definitions of language and the human/nonhuman binary, the familiarity of the (human) animals means that the novels fail to reimagine anthropocentric conceptions of animality.