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Every Twelve Seconds
A book review of Timothy Pachirat’s “Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight.”
There are many reasons we might conceal something we don’t want others to learn about us. If I know something someone else does not, it gives me the opportunity to manipulate my environment or change my actions to keep myself in power, empower others, or even remain at the status quo. Likewise, if the information is withheld or concealed, I cannot act in such a way to better myself or choose differently.
Timothy Pachirat’s book, Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight, gives a first-hand account of what it is like to work at a contemporary slaughterhouse in the United States. The book also serves to
“provoke reflection on how distance and concealment operate as mechanisms of power in modern society (pg 3).”
Pachirat’s lived experience, ethnographic account of the work, and relationships he had in the slaughterhouse are just as enthralling as they are disturbing. The hidden structures of the slaughterhouse, how it operates, and how Pachirat infers meaning in each case, divulge a story of how distance and concealment play a role in the control of power.
