“It just tastes better than other meat…”: Satire and cannibalism after Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal (1729)

This article examines the trope of cannibalism in satire after Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1727), identifying its function as a form of satiric exaggeration and vehicle for deconstruction. It also argues that cannibal satire demonstrates a reoccurring fascination with the privileging of the sensual above the intellectual. The taste for human flesh is mobilised to foreground the arbitrary and disturbing behaviours society can come to unthinkingly adopt when taste—as determined by governing fashions, cultural elites or newly emboldened publics—rather than reason becomes our guiding principle. In confronting readers and audiences with an invitation to accept cannibalism on the grounds of its sensual taste, couched in terms devoid of contempt, anger and disgust, Swift’s Modest Proposal challenges us to consider the extent to which our decision making is determined by either reason and critical discernment or gustatory satisfaction. Cannibalism also provides an allegorical framework for Swift and subsequent satirists to discuss politics, capitalism and animals. The enduring efficacy of this model will then be demonstrated through comparison to Matt Edmond’s mockumentary, Gregg Wallace’s Britain’s Miracle Meat. This type of cannibal satire, I modestly propose, helpfully illustrates the way satire in general uses exaggeration to stage critique. More significantly, this discussion of cannibal satire goes further still, making the case for satire’s ability to instill in readers a kind of critical habitus, encouraging them to rehearse their own reason and discernment