[-empyre-] Re: Eugenics

[Ryan Griffis <ryan.griffis@gmail.com>]

On Oct 11, 2007, at 9:00 PM, empyre-request@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au  
wrote:

> 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'.

With all due respect,
i think to assume that no one here has read any history of Eugenics  
is a big assumption. It's also a rather large assumption to delineate  
Eugenics as a hermetically defined enterprise.
i admit not reading the texts that you point to - and will certainly  
look them up (thanks for the recommendations!)- but CAE's text served  
as a convenient link to a text available on the fly for the purpose  
of the list - not a monolithic account of eugenics (there are plenty  
of archives for that). Perhaps my response is one very rooted in a US  
context, but the US is a context in which eugenics has historically  
had some weight.
Maybe if Steve could elaborate on how these texts counter balance the  
assertion of a second wave of eugenics?
But, i'm also not so sure why Osborn should be so quickly dismissed,  
being that he had such a prominent impact on the American Eugenics  
Society (among other aspects of domestic and foreign policy) and how  
eugenics was conceived and conceptualized in the US. Hardly  
representative of an insignificant source of power.
The conception of eugenics, by Osborn and others like Rockefeller,  
was expanded to include spatial and environmental planning that  
continue today, and operate in market and state apparatuses. Genetics  
controlled by the creation of favorable or unfavorable conditions in  
which rational people choose to or choose not to raise children.  
Geographer Ruth Gilmore Wilson talks about "organized abandonment" as  
an implicit policy in the US that approximates the same goals - goals  
that were more than clearly evident in the Gulf coast events of  
Hurricane Katrina.
Again, the judges enforcing the use of Norplant in mothers charged  
with child abuse or requesting welfare didn't consider themselves  
eugenicists.
i guess what i'm trying to communicate is that "eugenics" should not  
be considered as a clearly delineated set of historical values, as  
even the eugenics movement in its prime was divided by competing  
ideas. All those fields don't need to be collapsed back into some  
turn of the century program to understand how they come together in  
various instances in ways that certainly resemble eugenics broadly,  
if not carry out a very similar set of policies. But also to  
recognize that not all such investigations and inquiries inevitably  
lead to eugenics either. i don't care if it's called "eugenics" or  
not, but the policies in place that i've described in a very  
simplified manner, as well as what the more positive form of  
reproductive health (ART) enables, certainly bear the historical  
weight of the histories of eugenics.
The reality of the situation is not so cut and dry as to say "what  
WAS being engaged in within the field of eugenics". i mean, the  
reproductive rights movement (via Sanger) was caught up in the  
eugenics movement... do i think Planned Parenthood is a eugenicist  
organization? no.
It seems as if Steve is dismissing the practice of positive eugenics  
as ideological? Is not the technological selection of biology exactly  
this - when that selection can't help but be ideological? Why does  
the selection of biological traits in any way change the political  
situation? If non-heterosexuality is proven to be biological does  
that close off the argument of their rights? Both sides use its  
"naturalness" to argue for inalienable rights on the one hand and  
it's medical treatment on the other. While others ask why they can't  
change their love interests without changing their access to rights -  
who cares if it's biology or desire?
Since i mentioned Sekula earlier, i recently reread his older account  
of the parallel rise of photographic evidence and statistics in "The  
Body and the Archive" noticing his reading of the difference that can  
occur within larger techno-social paradigms that doesn't require such  
an easy collapse of any singular instance - the new methods of  
statistics were used by both reformist and conservative forces  
arguing the still lingering fight over nature or nurture. Most  
importantly, neither side argued over the existence of (or place for)  
the "criminal".
best,
ryan