Solving a Crisis with a Crisis: Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

Abstract

As recent world events demonstrate, a virus outbreak can cause the normal to become impossible and the unthinkable to become normal. Although the virus which sets into motion Agustina Bazterrica’s novel Tender is the Flesh is of a different order than COVID-19, it likewise puts the normal in question. Bazterrica’s novel, translated from the Spanish by Sarah Moses, explores the ways in which global infrastructures and flows of capital preserve themselves in the face of crisis, no matter the consequences for mankind and planet. Although the world Bazterrica imagines is strange and monstrous, the strength of her novel comes from the fact that this world is uncomfortably similar to our own.