Flesh, Skin, and Tallow: Swiftian Husbandry of ‘Matters’ Human

Abstract

Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729) and Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Book 4 in particular, probe into the intricacies of human ‘matter’ in its relation to the ‘self’ in a distinctively Irish context. Matter as opposed to and defying ‘form’ and ‘order’ is Swift’s celebrated theme in virtually every work, but his Irish writings determinedly concentrate on human matter, that is, human bodies and bodily refuse, distinguished from the commodities and urban waste of inanimate matter in his London poems. As the Modest Proposer pronounces beyond dispute, Ireland has nothing in surplus but human bodies, which makes the Irish problem how to deal with this unwanted human matter. The Proposer starts by bizarrely de-animating the beggarly bodies into zombiesque beings, thus effectively stripping them of any claim to subjectivity. This paves the way for his modest and ‘thrifty’ proposal, obligated by Irish penury, for use and reuse of Irish flesh and skins to feed and clothe the nation. A Modest Proposal turns out at once a gruesome literalization and thrifty recycling of Swift’s own 1720 Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture. Gulliver’s “Oeconomy” is even more thorough in dealing with human/Yahoo bodies, and with fiendish determination he takes to utilizing and recycling Yahoo hairs, skins, and tallow, pres