Chorea and community in a nineteenth-century town (original) (raw)
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Both early twentieth-century eugenics and late-century genetics authorize, anchor and certify diagnostic regimes. Each discourse is positioned around a historical trajectory that moves from a 'curative' promise of rehabilitation to an increasingly 'custodial' proposition involving the pathologization and oversight of groups viewed as non-normative. Snyder and Mitchell interpret eugenics in the United States as an expansive testing regime that produced disabled people as a species of defective intelligence and aberrant physiology. What resulted was a frenzy of medical assessment that produced-for a time-a 'subnormal' nation out of the classification of 'defective' biologies. The newly professional scientific disciplines flocked to participate in the identification, care and training of those labelled 'feeble-minded'. Proliferating scientific representations of those deemed to inhabit 'subnormal' bodies ultimately provided the justification for institutionalizing, sterilizing and destroying the liberty of those classified as inferior. The authors understand the repercussions of this methodology not as 'flawed' science, but as the basis for contemporary definitions of disability as degrees of deviation from profoundly subjective aesthetic and functional criteria. A study of the eugenics movement in the United States demonstrates that what we refer to today as physical and cognitive disability provides two paradoxical outcomes: first, those labelled as recipients of curative interventions tend to suffer the residual taint of their pathological identifications, while failing to benefit from the initial promises of 'cure' so zealously espoused by diagnostic regimes; second, those who occupy medically based classifications of deviance serve as models for a more general comprehension of human biology even as the research subjects themselves are marginalized from social participation.
[P. A. Lombardo] Historical Development and Practice of Eugenics
2011
This essay will focus on the history of eugenics, particularly as that idea was employed in the United States as a justification for laws adopted in the 19th and 20th Century. I will describe the impact of eugenic theory in the United States, where it enjoyed widespread popularity, and trace how some practices described as “eugenic” spread internationally. I will then explore why—apart from the horrific practices it eventually led to, ranging from coercive sterilization to genocide-the underlying hopeful message of eugenicists was popular for so long. Finally, I will describe how the word “eugenics” is now coming back into common use. In one case it has been revived in the service of political and rhetorical goals, and the meaning it had within its earlier historical context has been distorted.
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia For Promoting Useful Knowledge, 2005
In the early 1920s, determinist conceptions of biology helped to transform Better Babies contests into Fitter Families competitions with a strong commitment to controlled human breeding. While the earlier competitions were concerned for physical and mental standards, the latter contests collected data on a broad range of presumed hereditary characters. The complex behaviors thought to be determined by one's heredity included being generous, jealous, and cruel. In today's context, the popular media often interpret advances in molecular genetics in a similarly reductive and determinist fashion. This paper argues that such a narrow interpretation of contemporary biology unnecessarily constrains the public in developing social policies concerning complex social behavior ranging from crime to intelligence.
Amerikastudien/American Studies, 2019
As a discussion between American historian Ruth Schwartz Conan and Disability Studies scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson illustrates, reaching consensus on what a term like eugenics means and how it might be used accurately in contemporary discourse proves to be highly difficult. This article shows that Disability Studies methodologies enforce a reassessment of the United States' eugenic past, and, further, that by looking at the 'long arm' of this eugenic ideology, Disability Studies has provided ample ground for the reconsideration of eugenic discourses of normalization and their influence on biopolitical questions of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Looking at these discourses through a Literary Studies lens, I aim to stress the importance of creative nonfiction within Disability Studies writing. Disability Studies scholars challenge academic forms of knowledge production through unconventional aesthetics and change how questions of eugenics (past and present) are being addressed in the United States and beyond.
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 2005
In the early 1920s, determinist conceptions of biology helped to transform Better Babies contest into Fitter Families competitions with a strong commitment to controlled human breeding. While the earlier competitions were concerned for physical and mental standards, the latter contests collected data on a broad range of presumed hereditary characters. The complex behaviors thought to be determined by one's heredity included being generous, jealous, and cruel. In today's context, the popular media often interpret advances in molecular genetics in a similarly reductive and determinist fashion. This paper argues that such a narrow interpretation of contemporary biology unnecessarily constrains the public in developing social policies concerning complex social behavior ranging from crime to intelligence.