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I. Introduction
WHEN EDMUND BURKE WROTE OF A "SWINISH MULTITUDE" IN THE Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), he probably did not expect to receive many responses from offended swine.' Yet in such publications as James Parkinson's "An Address to the Hon. Edmund Burke from the Swinish Multitude" (1793), Daniel Isaac Eaton's "Hog's Wash" (17941795) and Thomas Spence's "Pig's Meat; or, Lessons for the Swinish Multitude" (1793-1796), Burke's infamous phrase became emblematic of a political philosophy that advocates a rigidly hierarchical social structure.2 It is not simply Burke's defense of inherited rank that provoked such indignation, but rather it is his assumption - most concisely expressed by his reference to a swinish multitude - that cultural differences are based on biological differences and that the disempowered therefore deserve their subjection. In other words, Burke offends because he implies that the disempowered are like animals and ought to be treated like animals.
The connotations of "swinish" convey an insult particular to the reputation of pigs (a "sheepish multitude," for example, would be an entirely different beast), but any discussion of animals in a political context inevitably conjures the problems of difference: including the questions of whether difference arises from cultural or biological causes, how to calibrate degrees of difference, and how to accommodate differences fairly in a political and economic community. The difference between humans and animals is emblematic of difference among humans not only by analogy, but also because alterity itself is often associated with non-humans.3 The inferiority of women, slaves, and the poor is justified by the assertion that they are less human than educated European men because they lack the fullest possession of a humanizing trait, such as having a soul, rationality, a moral sense, or the ability to use language. As Keith Thomas observes, "if the essence of humanity was defined as consisting in some specific quality, then it followed that any man who did not display that quality was subhuman, semianimal."4 The association of some groups with animals correlates with their social standing:
Once perceived as beasts, people were liable to be treated accordingly. The ethic of human domination removed animals from the sphere of human concern. But it also legitimized the ill-treatment of those humans who were in a...