Bodies, power, and diversityCHID 260

Phillip ThurtleComparative History of

Ideas

Agenda

• Introduce you to the term “biopower” building on Rahul Gairola’s presentation

• Give a historical example of how it operated-American eugenics movement

• If there were a eugenics today, what would it look like?

Types of oppressionInterpersonalInstitutionalBiopower

Developed by Michel Foucault in his later worksHistory of Sexuality, 1976

The control of the social body through the regulation of the natural body

Regulation of procreation, health, heredity, well being

Often more subtle and more encompassing than other forms “Life has now . . . become an object of power”

What might this look like?

Eugenics

• American and British innovation • Flourished 1880s to 1930s (1960s)• Imported by many countries

– Nazi Germany, race hygiene

• Not just race, “feebleminded,” unskilled labor, those living in isolated areas, etc.

• Breed a better race

To be well born-Francis Galton

• Eugenics- well born-1883

• Popular and scientific movement early twentieth century

• Before strict separation of “breeding” and “training”

• Developed the notion of statistical regression

Inquiries into Human Faculty and its

Development• “The moral and intellectual wealth of a nation largely consists in the multifarious variety of gifts of the men who compose it, and it would be the very reverse of improvement to make all its members assimilate to a common type. However, in every race of domesticated animals, and especially in the rapidly-changing race of man, there are elements, some ancestral and others the result of degeneration, that are of little or no value, or are positively harmful.” (2)

Popular

• From 1880-1930s (60s)

• Magazines and books

• State Fairs• Movies

Kansas State Fair 1929

Most images courtesy of the Eugenic Archives, http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/

Policy

Scientific

Eugenics Record Office, Cold Spring

Harbor

Homo Sapiens 1900

Peter Cohen, 1998

How do you spot a eugenicist?

• Progressive, often liberal– Modern birth control– Often supported women’s rights– Often anti-war– In limited cases, even anti-racist

How do we use the US eugenic movement to

think about diversity?• Old “eugenics” still a threat

– Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray, 1994

– Robert Clark Graham “genius sperm bank,” 1999

– Be careful of anybody telling you what your body is and what it can do

– “we still do not know what a body can do” Spinoza

Remember biopower?

• What would a current “eugenics” look like?

• Where on campus would you find a eugenicist?