Amid mounting concerns over viral and bacterial outbreaks in industrial farm settings, scholars of modern industrial agriculture have increasingly focused their attention on the dangers posed by an “excess of life.” While important, this focus tends to produce a narrative in which life is associated with disruption, pathology, and chaos, while that part of the animal that remains productive comes to be viewed as determined, machinelike, and anthropogenic. In this essay, I focus on the way that life is counted upon to exceed. Industrial animal husbandry depends upon nonhuman vitalities to predictably exceed human inputs to production, but this fact has been overlooked amid an emphasis on containment and control. I propose we think about nonhuman contributions to production, including those taking place at the microbiological level, as labor. This approach confers two advantages over Cary Wolfe’s influential biopolitical analysis of the factory farm. First, it provides a register for talking about how life can be both potentially disruptive and indispensable to certain forms of capitalist production, even as multiple forces work to erase nonhuman contributions from the way we think about production. Second, it allows for the possibility of agency on the part of farmed animals that includes more than just resistance, disruption, or death. This essay concludes with an ethnographic description of the lives of broiler chickens on a hobby farm in rural Michigan, asking what it is like to do metabolic labor.

中文翻译：

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代谢劳动

在对工业农场环境中病毒和细菌暴发的担忧日益加剧的同时，现代工业农业的学者越来越多地将注意力集中在“生命过剩”带来的危险上。尽管很重要，但这种关注往往会产生一种叙事，其中生活与破坏，病理和混乱有关，而保持生产力的那部分动物则被视为坚定，机器化和人为的。在本文中，我着重于生活被指望超越的方式。工业畜牧业依靠非人类的生命力来预测地超过人类对生产的投入，但是由于强调围堵和控制，这一事实被忽视了。我建议我们考虑非人类对生产的贡献，包括在微生物水平上作为劳动的贡献。与Cary Wolfe对工厂农场进行的有影响力的生物政治分析相比，该方法具有两个优势。首先，它提供了一个记录，用于讨论生活如何可能对某些形式的资本主义生产具有潜在的破坏性和不可或缺的作用，即使有多种力量消除了我们对生产的思考方式所产生的非人类贡献。其次，它使养殖动物有可能采取行动，而不仅仅是抵抗，破坏或死亡。本文最后以人种志描述了密歇根州农村一个业余农场的肉鸡的生活，询问进行代谢劳动的感觉。它为谈论生活如何可能对某些形式的资本主义生产既有潜在的破坏性和必不可少的内容提供了信息，即使有多种力量努力消除了我们对生产的思考方式中的非人类贡献。其次，它使养殖动物有可能采取行动，而不仅仅是抵抗，破坏或死亡。本文最后以人种志描述了密歇根州农村一个业余农场的肉鸡的生活，询问进行代谢劳动的感觉。它为谈论生活如何可能对某些形式的资本主义生产既有潜在的破坏性和必不可少的内容提供了信息，即使有多种力量努力消除了我们对生产的思考方式中的非人类贡献。其次，它使养殖动物有可能采取行动，而不仅仅是抵抗，破坏或死亡。本文最后以人种志描述了密歇根州农村一个业余农场的肉鸡的生活，询问进行代谢劳动的感觉。或死亡。本文最后以人种志描述了密歇根州农村一个业余农场的肉鸡的生活，询问进行代谢劳动的感觉。或死亡。本文最后以人种志描述了密歇根州农村一个业余农场的肉鸡的生活，询问进行代谢劳动的感觉。