Art, Politics and Animality in Pigsty (1969). A reading of Pasolini’s cinema in the light of Foucault

Abstract

This article analyzes the aesthetic and political allegory of the pig that emerges in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film Pigsty in the light of some foucauldian questions about torture, sexuality and Nazism. Through Pasolin’s reflection on animality, which unfolds in taboo themes such as cannibalism and bestiality, we propose a critical approach to this cinematographic work with some passages from Foucault’s texts, whose result is to understand the society of torture and its punishment rituals; the problem of sexuality in the game of power and the pig as a representative figure of both Nazi biopolitics and consumer society.