[-empyre-] Eugenics

["sdv@krokodile.co.uk" <sdv@krokodile.co.uk>]

ryan/all

Regarding Eugenics;

As an initial reading list for Eugenics I'd suggest the following rather 
than the net piece, with its concentration on Osborn and it's attempt to 
construct a second wave of eugenics.

Punnett  Mendalism - 1905, J.B.S Haldane - Possible Worlds 1944 - 
especially the essay 'Eugenics and Social reform'. Nik Rose et all - 
Changing the Subject. 1984.

I'd especially recommend the latter piece as a counter balance to CAE's 
second wave notion, because the focus on psychology, social regulation 
and the subject adequately demonstrates, from it's left-foucauldian 
perspective, a good means of understanding what was being engaged in 
within the field of eugenics. Additionally it should enable the reader 
to recognize the differences between the ideologies supporting eugenics 
and the difficultly in collapsing fields such as genetics, psychology 
and neurosciences back into an ideological framework 'eugenics'.

steve





Ryan Griffis wrote:
> > And the goal is not the same as eugenics, which is ideologically  
> > distinct and primarily existed in an earlier social and economic  
> > cycle – the main difference being that the ideologies that formed  
> > eugenics are pre-spectacle, pre-mass-consumption.
>
>
> i'm going to continue a conversation with Steve offlist regarding  some 
> of the problems of guilt, responsibility and capital - if he'll  
> continue to indulge me :)
> But the question of eugenics is related to some of the other  
> conversations going on here, so i'd like to follow that up.
> i'm not convince of Steve's quick dismissal of eugenics as  
> "ideologically distinct" and existing in an "earlier social and  
> economic cycle."
> CAE's notion of a "second wave" of eugenics - one based on spectacle  
> and consumption in a hyper-competitive, individualized economic  context 
> - was based on some of Osborn's own understanding that the  earlier 
> eugenics program, based on pre-free market ideologies was  bound to fail.
> http://yougenics.net/home.php?page=eugenicsCAE
> And aside from that, i think it's too convenient to assume that  because 
> the dominant ideology is one of hyper free market  competition, that 
> other (seemingly) competing and contradictory  ideologies aren't 
> operating at the same time. Was the US state's use  of Norplant in the 
> 90s pre-spectacle/mass-consumption? Or is that  just not considered 
> enough of an instance of negative eugenics?
> On other thoughts...
> There is an issue of scale going on here that i think is not mutually  
> exclusive or merely incongruous. Eugene asks early on in The Global  
> Genome how biological exchange can be considered more specifically  than 
> the kinds of exchanges that have gone on for ages, without  becoming 
> ahistorical.  The scale he locates is globalization (via  Sassen and 
> others) - but it's a globalization that vacillates between  place AND 
> space. And that space is informatic and political as well  as the place 
> is geographic and biological (Foucault's biopolitics +  Marx's "species 
> being") - at least that's how i remember it.
> The student Judith described earlier represents another issue of  scale, 
> and the functioning of the symbolic matter of DNA in removing  the 
> political from the informatic - in some very "established" ways.
> i'm reminded of Alan Sekula's depictions of the slow mechanisms of  
> global trade - how all that speed of information exchange is  buttressed 
> by city sized ships and ports. the economy may have  changed, but the 
> role of ports (and the space/place of the sea)  remains central to our 
> current form of globalization - and it's still  a globalization of 
> asymmetrical power and benefits enforced by  violence even in the face 
> of competing realities.
> i'm wondering how or if a similar reading of biological exchange  might 
> be interesting. If synthetic biology is an exchange of novel  aesthetics 
> and economics, what is coming along with it that could be  read in the 
> very material it moves through?
> i also wonder if that question makes any sense :)
> best,
> ryan_______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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