The Eugenetic Imagination
Eugenics and Genetics in Early 21st-Century Anglo-American Fiction
Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Acknowledgments
- Table of Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Eugenic Literatures
- 3. What’s in a Name?
- 3.1 Eugenic Truth Discourses
- 3.1.1 Nature over Nurture, or: Heredity Is Paramount
- 3.1.2 Eugenics, Race, and Racism
- 3.1.3 Degeneration and Degenerates Everywhere
- 3.1.4 Human Improvement and Race Betterment
- 3.2 Eugenic Strategies of Intervention and the Eugenic Subject
- 3.3 Human Genetics and Genomics Truth Discourses
- 3.3.1 Eugenics as Pseudoscience and Aberration
- 3.3.2 Central Dogma, Genetic Determinism, and Genocentrism
- 3.3.3 Race and Racial Science After the Holocaust?
- 3.3.4 Individual Choice and Autonomy
- 3.3.5 Gene Therapy and Human Enhancement
- 3.4 Genetic Strategies of Intervention and the Genetic Subject
- 4. Simon Mawer: Mendel’s Dwarf (1997)
- 4.1 Nature/Nurture and the Central Dogma
- 4.2 Benign Choices vs. “the Malign Hand of Chance”
- 4.3 Dwarfs, Criminals, and Other Degenerates
- 4.4 Mendel’s Dwarf and Truth Discourses Miscellaneous
- 4.4.1 Race
- 4.4.2 Pseudoscience
- 4.4.3 Improvement, Therapy, and Enhancement
- 4.5 Intervention Strategies and the (Eu-)Genetic Subject
- 4.6 Mendel’s Dwarf: Imagining the Eugenetic Professional
- 5. Dan Brown: Inferno (2013)
- 5.1 Eugenetics and the “Population Apocalypse Equation”
- 5.2 Sacrificing Individual Choice and Autonomy
- 5.3 Humanity+: Eugenetics and the Pursuit of the Posthuman
- 5.4 (Pseudo-)Science, Zealots, and Superhumans
- 5.5 Strategies for Intervention and Modes of Subjectification
- 5.6 Inferno, Doomsday Scenarios, and Eugenetic Solutions
- 6. Robert Sawyer: The Neanderthal Parallax (2002-2003)
- 6.1 Sapient, Neanderthal, and Degenrate Hominids
- 6.1.1 (Over-)Population in Two Parallel Worlds
- 6.1.2 On Rape, War, and Genocide
- 6.2 Genetic Determinism in Two Parallel Worlds
- 6.3 Chance vs. Choice in the Creation of a Hybrid Child
- 6.4 Perpetual Improvement of the Barast Gene Pool
- 6.5 Pseudoscience and Aberrations in Parallel Worlds
- 6.6 A Parallel World Without Racism
- 6.7 A Eugenic Field Experiment in a Parallel World
- 7. Jodi Picoult: Second Glance (2003)
- 7.1 The Nature-nurture Controversy vs. Genetic Determinism
- 7.2 Charting the Degenerates
- 7.3 Breeding Better Vermonters vs. Individual Health
- 7.4 State Coercion vs. Individual Choice and Autonomy
- 7.5 Pseudoscientific Endeavors vs. “Real” Science
- 7.6 The Abenaki and Eugenic Racism in Vermont
- 7.7 Strategies for Intervention and Modes of Subjectification
- 7.8 Second Glance: An Allegory
- 8. Writing the Eugenetic Imagination
- Works Cited
- Literature
- Criticism
- Series Index
List of Abbreviations
A |
|
AES 37 |
American Eugenics Society |
ART 96 |
assissted reproductive technologies |
D |
|
DNA 38 |
deoxyribonucleic acid |
H |
|
HGP 2 |
Human Genome Project |
HO 140 |
Hominids (2002) |
HU 141 |
Humans (2003) |
HY 141 |
Hybrids, Hybrids (2003) |
I |
|
I 115 |
Inferno (2013) |
IVF 58 |
in vitro fertilization |
M |
|
MD 57 |
Mendel’s Dwarf (1997) |
P |
|
PGD 51 |
preimplantation genetic diagnosis |
PGS 54 |
preimplantation genetic screening |
S |
|
SG 179 |
Second Glance (2003) |
SNO 140 |
Sudbury Neutrino Observatory |
W |
|
WHO 116 |
World Health Organization |
1. Introduction
We tell stories because in the last analysis human lives need and merit being narrated. This remark takes on its full force when we refer to the necessity to save the history of the defeated and the lost. The whole history of suffering cries out for vengeance and calls for narrative.
(Ricoeur 75)
On January 25, 1996, Justice Joanne B. Veit of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench delivered her ruling in the Muir vs. The Queen case. The verdict vehemently stated the wrongfulness of the forced sterilization and confinement of Leilani Muir and granted the plaintiff monetary compensation for her ordeal. Roughly four and a half years later, on the morning of June 26, 2000, US President William Clinton and the British Prime Minister Tony Blair held a press conference – linked across the Atlantic via satellite – to jointly announce the completion of the first working draft of the human genome. Both politicians had high hopes for the genomic data, particularly in the fight against human diseases. Clinton even went so far as to claim that “it is now conceivable that our children’s children will know the term cancer only as a constellation of stars” (The White House).
These two events, unconnected as they may appear at first glance, not only epitomize the state of affairs in the ongoing debates about eugenics and human genetics/genomics at the beginning of the new millennium, but they also reflect the concepts that are the main focus of this study: the representation of eugenics and genetics/genomics in Anglo-American fiction of the early 21st century, or more precisely the connection between the two concepts as depicted in novelistic writing.
Though none of the participants in the press conference explicitly mentioned the eugenics movements of the past, every single one of them stressed the responsibility in dealing with the newly gained genomic data. As Tony Blair so succinctly put it: “our job is to try and develop the possibilities and thwart the dangers” (The White House). These dangers inherent in genomic science are of no small concern as another speaker, Dr. J. Craig Venter, President of Celera Genomics, and one of the leading scientists in ←13 | 14→the process of sequencing the human genome, admitted. He expressly referred to a CCN/Time magazine poll published earlier that day, which had revealed that 46% of the respondents believed in a negative impact of the Human Genome Project (HGP) (The White House). Only 40% expressed their conviction as to its beneficial outcomes (“Human genome to go public”).
One obvious explanation for the widespread public concerns about possible negative consequences of genomic science is the circumstance that “[t]he current revolution in molecular biology is not the first but the second large-scale attempt to modify the pattern of human heredity for the better” (Buchanan et al. 27) – the first one being the eugenics movements of the past. In their study From Chance to Choice. Genetics & Justice (2000) Buchanan et al. claim that the movement in the United States, for example, “was endorsed, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, by most scientists working in the field of human genetics. Indeed, eugenics was the motivation for much of the early scientific research in this field”. Therefore, “it is inevitable that today’s genetics proceeds in the shadow of eugenics,” it is “Round Two” (28), so to speak.
Cases such as Leilani Muir’s make this point even more apparent. As the first sterilization victim to successfully sue a government, hers became a landmark case that inspired hundreds of other victims of wrongful sterilization to file similar lawsuits (Wilson 125). Other aspects that heightened public awareness for the victims were the public excuses made by various governments: In 1999, the government of Alberta, Canada apologized for the sterilization of more than 2,800 people between 1928 and 1970 (“Alberta apologizes”). Likewise, in 2002, the governor of Virginia apologized to victims of eugenic policies in his state, and the governors of Oregon, the Carolinas, California, Georgia, and Indiana followed suit (Lombardo, “Disability” 65-67).1
←14 | 15→In this context, the claim that “we stand on many shoulders,” made by Dr. Francis Collins, who participated in the press conference as the head of the International Human Genome Project at the time, takes on an unintentionally ironic twist: the scientists indeed stand on many shoulders, not least those of the victims the first large-scale attempt to improve human heredity claimed.
Though it was only in 1883 that the Englishman Sir Francis Galton coined the term “eugenics” (Inquiries 17), the ideas behind the concept can be traced back in literature as far as antiquity, as the following excerpt from Plato’s Republic proves:
‘I see that you have in your house hunting-dogs and a number of pedigree cocks. Have you ever considered something about their unions and procreations? […] In the first place,’ I said, ‘among these themselves, although they are a select breed, do not some prove better than the rest?’ ‘They do.’ ‘Do you then breed from all indiscriminately, or are you careful to breed from the best?’ […] ‘It follows from our former admissions,’ I said, ‘that the best men must cohabit with the best women in as many cases as possible and the worst with the worst in the fewest, and that the offspring of the one must be reared and that of the other not, if the flock is to be as perfect as possible.’ (459a, d, e)
Not only does the argument, put forth by Plato’s teacher Socrates, identify men and women he deems better than others and claims that for society’s sake the offspring of the former alone should be raised, but it also displays a line of reasoning that would later become a staple of eugenics: empirical values from animal breeding are considered applicable to the procreation of man.
A similar attitude can, for example, be observed in Galton’s Inquiries Into Human Faculty and Its Development (1883), where he defines eugenics for the first time as follows:
That [...] [which] is termed in Greek, eugenes, namely, good in stock, hereditarily endowed with noble qualities. This, and the allied words, eugeneia, etc., are equally applicable to men, brutes, and plants. We greatly want a brief word ←15 | 16→to express the science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which, especially in the case of man, takes cognisance of all influences that tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. The word eugenics would sufficiently express the idea [...]. (17)
Like Plato, Galton employs a dichotomy to differentiate between more and less “suitable” people, and he likens the procreation of man to animals (and plants). However, Galton goes even further: he calls eugenics a “science” and extends the factors that need to be taken into consideration for the improvement of “stock” beyond the mere question of who mates with whom.
Galton had high hopes for eugenics. He believed it had the potential “to become an orthodox religious tenet of the future” (Galton, “Eugenics” 5). As chapter 3 is going to show, his high expectations were only partially fulfilled: Eugenics turned into a worldwide social movement but due to its association with the Nazi atrocities committed during the Third Reich became widely discredited – at least in name, if not necessarily in practice – after World War 2.
According to MacKellar and Bechtel, “[s]election strategies or decisions aimed at affecting […] the genetic heritage of a child, a community or humanity in general have always represented a challenge to human beings from an ethical perspective,” and it is this challenge that “was the inspiration of many popular works of science fiction” (1) of which Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and Andrew Niccol’s GATTACA (1997) are the most prominent examples in literature and film respectively (MacKellar and Bechtel 1). However, it was not only the science fiction genre that was inspired by eugenics.
The following chapter is going to show that what Ewa Barbara Luczak states for the period between 1900 and 1940 in the United States holds true for other English-speaking countries and later periods as well: eugenics “was a reservoir of imagery, metaphors and plots and, as such, a motor propelling numerous literary works” (6). At the beginning of the 20th century, eugenic terminology was omnipresent in society. Thus, it should come as no surprise that literary language was permeated with it as well: references to, for instance, “‘feeblemindedness,’ heredity, ancestry, ←16 | 17→racial and national blood, degeneration, regression, regeneration, race, breed, nordicism [sic], racial fitness, moronism, intelligence testing and sterilization” (Luczak 6) were legion. Some novels mentioned this terminology only in passing, others condemned or endorsed, sometimes even promoted eugenics. Then, after World War 2, eugenic measures were frequently used as a means to develop and accentuate the dystopian nature of fictional societies. However, these measures were usually not explicitly designated as eugenic.
Details
- Pages
- 288
- Publication Year
- 2023
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783631891797
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783631891803
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9783631876978
- DOI
- 10.3726/b20361
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2022 (December)
- Published
- Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2022. 288 pp., 1 fig. b/w
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