Abstract

This research paper attempts to provide a Foucauldian analysis of Fonterra’s television commercial ‘From Here to Everywhere’. With the cooperation of former All Black captain, Richie McCaw, ‘From Here to Everywhere’ is a play of power to construct a certain truth, that the dairy industry is the beating heart (and deliberately not the bountiful udder) of Aotearoa New Zealand’s economic and physical wellbeing. However, the Fonterra-McCaw narrative mystifies the often-violent realities of dairy farming while masquerading as natural certain ideologies, such as carnism, that perpetuate species and gender inequality. The recent Mycoplasma bovis outbreak in New Zealand inserts a measure of incoherence into the ‘From Here to Everywhere’ narrative, and reveals a profusion of nature-society, or hybrid, networks. It is through these hybrid networks, that can include the works of human agents such as artist-scholar lynn mowson, that cows’ live can be revisibilised and a new truth created.

Keywords: Foucault, Fonterra, New Zealand dairy farming industry

How to Cite:

Rendell, C., (2020) “'From Here to Everywhere': Foucault, Fonterra and Richie McCaw (A Cow’s Tale)”, Animal Studies Journal 9(1), 150-169. doi: https://doi.org/10.14453/asj.v9i1.6