“Problematization as a method (thinking problematically) involves studying problematized ‘objects’ (‘problematizations’) and the (historical) process of their production. It involves ‘standing back’ from ‘objects’ and ‘subjects,’ presumed to be objective and unchanging, in order to consider their ‘conditions of emergence and hence their mutability” (Bacchi, 2012: 4).

“They [cows] are living and not living, experiencing keenly these last days, hours, moments before they are sold once more, their bodies reduced to living flesh sold by the pound. One of the consequences of commodification, of materially and conceptually rendering animals as commodities, and even writing critically about their commodification is that who they are, as living, feeling, social beings (who they are in spite of and exterior to their commodification) can be easily obscured. So, yes, they are the soon to-be-dead, living dead, and future corpses, but they are not only that, and keeping this tension in mind may help to avoid the persistent erasure of their still-aliveness and their suffering, an erasure that is so easily accomplished through the commodification process” (Gillespie, 2021: 290).