Law, Viral Mutations, and Spectral Tropicality in Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender Is the Flesh (2017)

Introduction: Spectral Tropicality and Viral Mutations In mid-February 2025, the World Health Organization issued an alert in its weekly bulletin about an emerging outbreak of a mysterious disease in two villages in Equateur Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (WHO). This alert generated two major reports in the press: the first was that the disease could kill in less than 48 hours; the second was that there was an ongoing investigation into the possibility that the disease had started in three children who ingested a bat carcass (and who died with severe symptoms of hemorrhagic fever a few hours later). Experts at the time pointed out that the repercussions of the possible link between bat ingestion and the emergence of the disease were justified, since these animals are reservoirs of viruses such as Nipah, Marburg, Ebola, MERS-CoV, and, finally, SARS-CoV-2 (Rojek et al.). However, a few days later, this hypothesis was discarded by the WHO itself, when it found evidence that the contamination could be related to tainted water (Cohen). The media repercussions of the case above exemplify how public opinion is sensitive to disruptive events originating in the tropics—an area traditionally viewed through a dichotomy that, on the one hand, evokes the region as exotic, biodiverse, and paradisiacal and, on the other, as hostile, inhospitable, uncontrollable, and unhealthy (Benitez; Lundberg). Once understood as the white man’s tomb (Curtin), the tropics today reaffirm their agency through tropicality, functioning as a spectre that raises the horror of the dissolution of dreams, intentions, illusions of control, rights, justice, and, to a certain extent, human existence itself (Harvey). Spectral Tropicality is thus the phantasmagorical return of the ambivalent dimension of the tropics that destabilises any certainty and security regarding knowledge, control, or dominion over life. This article analyses how spectral tropicality becomes manifest through a highly mutagenic virus in Tender Is the Flesh (Cadáver Exquisito) by the Argentine writer Agustina Bazterrica, drastically altering the law to legalise cannibalism. In this book, patterns of meat consumption and production are transformed by the emergence of an infectious agent that contaminates all animals and is deadly to humans. In this scenario, the drastic transformation of laws as an effect of the virus’s high evasive capacity against efforts to produce vaccines and medicines is a symptom of spectral tropicality. This tropicality becomes even more powerful in the face of the devastating epidemics and pandemics emerging in the wake of the current planetary and climate crisis. The GGB Virus as a Mutation-Power Tender Is the Flesh presents a dystopian scenario in which a devastating virus contaminates all animals, making their flesh lethal to humans. Called GGB, the virus is described in the book as highly contagious, affecting a wide range of animal species, but transmitted to humans through the consumption of animal meat. The origin of the virus remains unclear, but its consequences are catastrophic for human society, leading to a ban on the consumption of animal meat due to its virulence. To contain the public health crisis, governments around the world implement drastic measures to eradicate farm animals and prohibit meat consumption. This scenario results in an extreme social transformation, where practices of cannibalism are institutionalised as a response to the scarcity of animal protein. Marcos Tejo lives in a small town in the north of Argentina, where he works as an administrator at a human abattoir, overseeing the production and slaughter of people bred for consumption. His role involves managing the "production" process to ensure it complies with the established regulations. As a form of bonus for his work, he receives a woman, described in the book as "prime meat" for consumption. The Argentine setting contributes to the creation of a subtropical and suffocating scenario, where the heat and humidity reinforce the feeling of decadence and despair in the plot. The vulnerability of women in this context is explored extensively in the book, as poor women are raised as livestock for both human consumption and reproduction. Here, we see the continuation of a capitalist pattern of exploiting animal flesh, which, in this case, extends to the flesh of women—illustrating a strong association between animal and female exploitation in a patriarchal regime, as explored in the philosophy of Carol J. Adams (Mercier). Tender Is the Flesh is part of a group of literary works, the starting point of which is a highly lethal disease that induces drastic changes on a planetary level, giving rise to morbid persistences associated with patriarchy and the capitalist system (Costa; Schneider). The GGB virus can be considered a mutation-power, a pathogen that evades human attempts at knowledge and control, while reconfiguring the material, social, political, and symbolic dimensions of life. This term may be used with inspiration from the concept of thing-power, as analysed in Jane Bennett’s vital materialism. While thing-power may suggest the centrality of objects, it actually refers to a heterogeneous assembly of bodies, elements, forces, ideas, institutions, and other factors that emerge as events—producing contingent effects that operate with and against human intentions, actions, and thoughts (Bennett). Agency here is not localised but arises from multiple sources that combine human and nonhuman characteristics. Although thing-power encompasses the dynamism of matter itself, the GGB virus points to something beyond that: a pathogenic agent with a high capacity to evade scientific research and defy explanation or containment. In the narrative, reality manifests as a recurring trauma that undermines human intentions, actions, and assumptions of control over the world—revealing the fragility of the self-sufficient universe of reason upon which the capitalist system is built (Kolozova). Thus, it is worth saying that due to its extreme complexity and dynamic nature, the virus represents a mutation-power that at times remains in obscurity and, most often, in complete darkness for the reader. The pandemic in the novel persists within the realm of the unthinkable, serving primarily a dramatic function that envelops the virus in a fog of mystery—raising more questions and doubts than it resolves. The virus as mutation-power in Bazterrica’s work sheds light on themes related to cruelty, survival, and dehumanisation. However, it also explores an underlying ambiguity in the face of a cataclysmic event. The pandemic caused by the GGB virus promotes a dissolution of the past, yet society’s reaction reinforces an attachment to and dependence on certain idealised aspects of that past—out of which extreme solutions emerge to preserve the illusion of life continuing as it was. The meat industry, governments, and the social attachment to meat consumption are all forces that reshape society to adapt to the new reality, producing extreme solutions that eerily resemble older patterns. It is the terror of losing the past—of losing the stability of customs and everything to which one is emotionally anchored (Whitehead)—that fuels speculation about how such horror might materialise in the face of global dissolution. The novel questions how far society can go to ensure the survival of outdated models and how social norms may be distorted under extreme conditions. It exposes the fragility of those norms, highlighting how severe crises can lead to a re-evaluation of values and practices previously deemed unacceptable—all in the name of preserving entrenched economic and cultural systems. The Law and the Sanitisation of Cannibalism In Bazterrica’s work, the legalisation of cannibalism and the breeding of humans for consumption reflect the dissolution of ethical and moral norms in times of extreme crisis. Society is divided into two classes: those who consume human flesh and those who are raised for slaughter, resulting in widespread dehumanisation. The construction and evolution of law emerge here as central elements in maintaining patterns of meat production and consumption in a collapsing society. In this sense, the GGB virus functions as a mutation-power that influences decisions at the legal level. The idea that nonhumans can act in some way within the legal sphere or initiate legal processes is supported by Western history itself. Philosopher Jane Bennett cites historical and contemporary cases in which things, animals, and elements act within legal frameworks. One example is the deodand (meaning “that which must be given to God”) in eleventh-century English law—objects, animals, or elements that caused death or harm to people, and were subsequently confiscated and sold by the Crown as a form of compensation. Another example Bennett discusses involves objects used as material evidence in criminal cases—items that function as actants by intervening in legal proceedings (Bennett 9). Other historical conceptions of nonhuman legal agency also exist. In the early modern period, animals and insects could be the subjects of lawsuits. This was the case with the green weevil (likely Otiorhynchus sulcatus), which devastated vineyards in eastern France in the sixteenth century and was the focus of a prolonged legal process marked by repeated motions and delays (Cabral; Vital). Between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, major catastrophes such as storms, droughts, and fires were sometimes considered evidence of crimes—often attributed to witches in cases of so-called climate magic in Europe (Behringer). With the consolidation of Cartesian realism and modern science—along with the resulting dualisms of nature–culture and mind–matter—nonhumans came to be regarded as more or less inert objects. However, this idea is now being significantly challenged by the growing prominence of nonhumans in the context of climate change and the environmental crisis, where they increasingly appear as intruders acting across various spheres of social life. A heightened awareness of existential risks related to the environmental crisis is also linked to the rise of the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s, which employed apocalyptic rhetoric to warn against the damage being inflicted on the planet. Thus, in general terms, there is a diffuse yet persistent conception that nonhuman events—whether climatic, pandemic, or otherwise—can exert radical and far-reaching transformations on human life and its institutions (Lundberg; Vital; Das). The intrusion of nonhuman things, elements, and animals has been understood as having a contingent character in itself, presenting varying intensities and degrees of impact in the way they affect humans, nonhumans, and institutions—including legal institutions (Grear). In Tender Is the Flesh, this issue is explored through the impact of a highly mutagenic virus on laws, which are changed to adapt the legal system to a new reality in which animal flesh is no longer available for consumption. The law thus becomes a tool for regulating what is unacceptable in the universe of readers, but which becomes justice in a future social world still clinging to a past dissolved by the force of a hypothetical pandemic. This transformation of laws, however, does not originate with power groups but emerges from the bottom of society. The situation resembles cases of climate witchcraft from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, when the Little Ice Age led populations to hunt witches—blamed for severe storms and droughts—shaping intellectual, religious, and legal debates over the validity of such practices. Cannibalism in Tender Is the Flesh begins among the lower classes. Reports of people secretly killing others for food began appearing in the media following the ban on animal meat sales, until the food industry saw an opportunity and pressured governments to legalise the breeding and slaughter of humans. Immigrants, the poor, and other marginalised populations became the main victims. However, the subsequent decrease in population, poverty, and meat prices was propagandised and, over time, came to be viewed positively—especially by the global elites. This is the continuation of necropolitics—a management of symbolic and real death aimed at maintaining the lives of privileged populations (Mbembe). However, this politics of death is elevated to another level in response to the vicissitudes of the pandemic. The process of legalising cannibalism, in turn, is shaped by a technical and neutral language regulated by laws, serving to normalise horror, erase the humanity of the victims, and conceal violence behind legal and sanitary terminology. At the beginning of the book, the prohibition of certain words when referring to the practice and to the people sent to slaughter is emphasised, as “there are words that cover up the world. There are words that are convenient, hygienic. Legal” (Bazterrica 1). The law thus becomes an instrument in service of cultural and economic continuity amid disruptive transformations, engendering a sanitisation and naturalisation of horror. The character Marcos Tejo, an employee at the Krieg meatpacking plant, reflects on the role law plays in this post-apocalyptic universe. Humans raised for slaughter cannot be called humans—under penalty of imprisonment or even being “processed” at the Municipal Slaughterhouse—because such a designation would grant them an identity. In this context, “meat processing” replaces prohibited terms like “death penalty” and “murder”. Cannibalism, of course, is also a word forbidden by law. In the slaughterhouses, technical vocabulary is used to refer to the humans being killed: “production”, “meat”, “food”, “heads to be processed”. Meanwhile, the media, commerce, and government refer to these humans as “special meat”. Spectral Tropicality and the Law All the disruptive transformations and attempts to control the situation through law take place in a permanently sweltering environment, punctuated by heat, heavy rain, and sweat dripping from the characters’ faces. The control established by law in Tender Is the Flesh is forged in the wake of the GGB virus, but tropicality remains at all times an intruder—at once familiar and strange—, a hostile spectre that surrounds the characters throughout the narrative. The effort to maintain a fantasy universe in which people continue to eat meat—now human meat, de-characterised and transformed into “special” animal meat—coexists with the virus as a shadow of what broke with previous eating patterns. At the same time, it is immersed in a tropicality that ebbs and flows throughout the narrative. These signs of tropicality function as a tomb of human control over the world, pushing the fantasy of mastery over oneself and the planet to extremes by conceiving of a diet based on cannibalism, conceptually disguised through legal control. The hypothesis is that the constant presence of signs of tropicality does not occur by chance, just as it is not coincidental that an outbreak of a devastating disease in Africa acquires significant media traction in a short span of time. It is now understood that tropical and subtropical ecosystems—subject to agricultural expansion, biodiversity loss, wildlife trade, and climate change—are the areas most at risk for the spillover and mutation of pathogens, leading to more frequent outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics (Vora et al.). These data reinforce the image of the tropics as regions not fully subject to human control, where efforts to dominate may instead trigger disease processes that spill over from the tropical zone to the entire planet, rendering it hostile, uncontrollable, and potentially uninhabitable. This represents an expansion of tropicality which, once seen as the tomb of the white man, could now become the tomb of all humanity. This is where resistance emerges—centered on abstraction and the maintenance of the fantasy of human control over the world by preserving old patterns of consumption and meat production. The critique of law in Bazterrica’s work is directly linked to the preservation of the illusion of power over oneself and the world, laying the groundwork for the protection of former ruling classes while discarding vulnerable groups—ultimately “feeding” on them. There is a metaphorical questioning here of an apocalypse that does not necessarily entail the end of capitalism, patriarchy, or systems of consumption, production, and power. The book invites readers to reflect on the plasticity of legal systems, in which universal ethical principles can be easily discarded, and to question the extent to which legal norms reflect justice or, conversely, are complicit in oppressive systems. Above all, it expresses diffuse anxieties about law and human institutions in a material, insidious universe—one that manifests as a completely indifferent spectre threatening human yearnings for permanence, control, and justice. References Bazterrica, Agustina. Tender Is the Flesh. Trans. Sarah Moses. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2020. Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke UP, 2010. Behringer, Wolfgang. “Climatic Change and Witch-Hunting: The Impact of the Little Ice Age on Mentalities.” Climatic Change 43.1 (1999): 335-51 Benitez, Christian Jil R., and Anita Lundberg. ”Tropical Materialisms: Toward Decolonial Poetics, Practices and Possibilities.“ eTropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics 21.2 (2022). Cabral, Diogo de Carvalho, and André Vasques Vital. “Multispecies Emergent Textualities: Writing and Reading in Ecologies of Selves.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 30.3 (2023): 705–27. 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Lundberg, Anita, André Vasques Vital, and Shruti Das. “Tropical Imaginaries and Climate Crisis: Embracing Relational Climate Discourses.” eTropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics 20.2 (2021). Mbembe, Achille. Necropolitics. Durham: Duke UP, 2020. Mercier, Claire. “Carne de Patriarcado. Consumo Animal-Femenino en Tres Distopías Feministas Recientes: Cadáver Exquisito de Agustina Bazterrica, Nación Vacuna de Fernanda García Lao y Sirènes de Laura Pugno.” Anclajes 28.3 (2024): 45-62. Rojek, Amanda, Zania Stamatak, Michael Head, and Paul Hunter. “Expert Reaction to Disease Outbreak of Unknown Cause in the DRC.” Science Media Centre, 26 Feb. 2025. . Vora, Neil M., et al. “Interventions to Reduce Risk for Pathogen Spillover and Early Disease Spread to Prevent Outbreaks, Epidemics, and Pandemics.” Emerging Infectious Diseases 29.3 (2023): 1-9. . Whitehead, Alfred N. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. New York: Free Press, 1978. 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