Beschreibung:
Robinson Crusoe (1719) is well known as a novel about cannibalism. Yet it is just as concerned with the slaughter of animals. This article argues that cannibalism and animal slaughter in Robinson Crusoe must be understood in tandem as highly politicised practices and considered in the light of the Foucauldian distinction between sovereign and disciplinary power. As an allegory for the foundation of political sovereignty – often linked in the novel to the sovereignty of humans over other animals – the novel reveals that effective management of humans, like that of livestock, requires a combination of sovereign and disciplinary power. Both types of power are shown to operate indiscriminately on the bodies and minds of humans and animals. As such, colonial power is shown to replicate the logic of cannibalism itself, which shocks precisely because of its failure to distinguish between the two. Finally, the ‘sympathy’ expressed by Crusoe in his dealings with animals must be understood as an intrinsic part of this strategy of domination through pastoral power. Written at the start of the age of sympathy, the novel therefore offers a cautionary corrective to a narrative of ever‐greater ‘humanity’ in our dealings with the brute creation.