Re: [-empyre-] Re: Eugenics



ryan/all

In the late 1930s it was rather common to see statements such as "The growing science of heredity is being used in this country to support the political opinions of the extreme right..." This was a reasonably accurate representation of how eugenics was applied unjustly to the poor, the sick, women and of course along racial lines. Strictly speaking it was a tool of overt social oppression, best understood along class and gender lines. The examples you raised are certainly interesting and they obviously can be made to fit loosely within the generic ideology of eugenics as you are presenting it. But personally I prefer simpler and more direct analyses of events like Katrina and for eample the absence of a healthcare system in the US. In the former case the concept of "organized abandonment" may address the deliberate decision to allow the unnecessary disaster to take place, but the empires decision to allow 30-40% of the local population to exist without healthcare was surely not an aspect of the ideologies that we loosely label 'eugenic'; but rather the consequence of the vast economic and natural resources within the boundaries of the empire, and the consequent ability of the empire to accept greater economic ups and downs within the system where, for example, european states such as sweden, uk, germany simply canbnot afford to sacrifice such a vast subsection of working people. (Hirst et al Globalization in Question is good on this).

"Why does the selection of biological traits in any way change the political
situation? "


The technology being available to select the gender of a child may have affects on the ongoing usually hidden holocaust identified in Sen's "More than 100 million women" in which Sen notes that although in the more developed countries the number of women outnumber the number of men the opposite is true in Asia, Africa, Latin America, China... Sen calculates a higher rate of female mortality variable from locale to locale according to local economic differences. Will the technology increase the number of missing women and how will it change the political situation, for there is no question that it will.

"If non-heterosexuality is proven to be biological does  that
close off the argument of their rights?"

The latter question is irrelevant - the very reason for the ontological question of equality is to ensure that difference, whether founded on intelligence, gender, pain, ideology or wealth is less than the recognition that singularities A <> B, a man and a woman perhaps, are always equivalent and equal prior to minor differences such as eye-colour. The problem with the technology is the criteria by which a person or a state will choose the trait... It is not then a question of biology or desire then but always ideology. Personally I think we should simply refuse to finance such obviously bad science, the scientist is obviously an idiot or he'd not have wasted our time researching the subject area.

It's upsetting that genetics is an area of scientific research that is always so deeply engaged in the bio-political that it is almost impossible to not be concerned about these issues.

best
s




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