University of Winnipeg’s Dr. Jason Hannan’s book, Meatsplaining: The Animal Agriculture Industry and the Rhetoric of Denial (Animal Publics), is part of the Sustainable Gastronomy exhibition at Alfred Nobel House and Museum in Karlskoga, Sweden until October 21, 2021.
Hannan’s book provides a critical analysis of how the modern animal agriculture industry, like other profit-driven industries, aggressively seeks to shield itself from public scrutiny, using a distinct set of rhetorical strategies to deflect criticism.
Meatsplaining cover
“This book was intended for an activist audience,” said Hannan. “I obviously had no idea it would end up in the house of Alfred Nobel. That was a very unexpected and pleasant bit of news, to say the least.”
The exhibition also marked Sustainable Gastronomy Day this year, where the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations was invited to showcase a selection of food culture publications.
The exhibition is co-organized by the Gourmand Awards and the Hallbars Research Institute for Sustainability Reports. The Gourmand Awards are celebrating ten years of their Sustainable Food Books category. The exhibition features a selection of Gourmand Awards winners, including more than 600 gastronomy books from 55 countries. Hannan’s book was one of the 2021 winners.
The museum is named after the renowned Alfred Nobel. Nobel signed his last will and testament, giving the largest share of his fortune to a series of prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. The Nobel Prizes are considered to be the most prestigious and sought prizes in the world.
Meatsplaining is Hannan’s fourth book. He is author of Ethics Under Capital: MacIntyre, Communication, and the Culture Wars (Bloomsbury, 2019), and editor of Philosophical Profiles in the Theory of Communication (Peter Lang, 2012) and Truth in the Public Sphere (Lexington, 2016). His next book is Trolling Ourselves to Death: Democracy in the Age of Social Media (forthcoming with Oxford University Press).
