ABSTRACT
More wretched than the hapless ‘savages’ who seemed to possess only a primitive language were the animals alleged to have none at all. Deemed to lack language and the rationality that accompanies its use, the animal is confi ned in a prison of silence, unable to testify for itself or to share the privileges that language implicitly bestows on its speakers. Such were the sentiments of British socialist, animal rights activist and early promoter of vegetarianism Henry Salt in his infl uential Animals’ Rights Considered in Relation to Human Progress (1892). Condemning the practice of medical vivisection, he writes:
Salt’s solution to the problem of cruelty against animals is thus a linguistic one. Animals need to be renamed so as to make their kinship with humanity more evident and thus their exploitation less tenable – a remarkably naïve presumption, given that Salt’s choice of new appellation, lower races, was hardly one that was winning respect and equal treatment for the dark-skinned peoples so designated in Europe’s colonies. Not only do animals need to be re-signifi ed, but also their ability to signify for themselves must be recognized. For Salt, relying here on anecdotal rather than scientifi c evidence, the fact that animals possessed language, or at least, an advanced communicative ability with humans, was indisputable. Only those blinded by tradition or hardened by scientifi c cruelty could dismiss their unmistakeable articulations. Once its eloquence
was recognized, the animal might be freed from the stigma of bestialism and admitted into the human confraternity.
