The Eugenization of Love: Sarah Grand and the Morality of Genealogy

Richardson, Angélique

doi:10.1353/vic.2000.0031

Cited by 2 publications

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“…They were also active in the provision of the services and education for which they campaigned. As the work of historians makes increasingly plain, many 'early' feminists were heavily invested in the discourses and governmental rationalities of eugenics (see Taylor Allen, 1993Allen, , 2000Franks, 2005;Lewis, 2000;Richardson, 1999Richardson, , 2000Scharnhorst, 2000;Shu, 2006;Weikart, 2004;Ziegler, 2008).…”

Section: The Missing Matter Of Biopolitical Racismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biology, Contingency and the Problem of Racism in Feminist Discourse

Blencowe

2011

Theory, Culture & Society

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In the 1970s and 1980s a strong opposition and anxiety towards biological and naturalizing knowledges was the norm in feminist discourse. In the past decades the certainties of that 'anti-biologism' have been challenged, in part because of a new recognition of the role of contingency in both biological determination and biological science. What seems to have survived the shift is a set of normative assumptions concerning the role of determinacy and contingency (or being-born and becoming) in the political implications of ontological claims: an assumed political valorization of contingency. This article challenges those assumptions. It draws attention to the embrace of contingency and processuality on the part of supremacist biopolitical discourse, and suggests the need to think again about the politics of contingency and becoming (in constructivist as well as biologistic discourses). Focusing on the issue of racism and supremacist-specification, the article takes a genealogical look at 'second-wave' feminist anti-biologism. Monique Wittig's materialist feminist attack on naturalizing ideology and 'the myth of woman' provides the (ideal-typical) historical example. The article draws attention to curious absences in Wittig's (and Rosalind Rosenberg's) anti-biologistic statements concerning early 20th-century biologistic feminism: the absence of a critique of eugenics, racism and supremacism. Arguably the condemnation of biology as a conservative 'ideology of the status quo' created masks for biopolitical ontology, obscuring the progressive, dynamic, processual character of biologism and of modern racism. While dislodging some powers of biologistic discourse, feminist anti-biologism might also have played a part in facilitating the revitalization of biopolitical racism within the constructivist culturalist rubric. The aim of the article is not to critique 'second-wave' feminism from the perspective of contemporary scholarship, but to help generate new ways of thinking and feeling about the role of ontology, contingency and temporality in the present politics of classification.

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Section: The Missing Matter Of Biopolitical Racismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biology, Contingency and the Problem of Racism in Feminist Discourse

Blencowe

2011

Theory, Culture & Society

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“…Feminist joined the British Eugenics Society in order to encourage women to take up their role as future guardians of civic and social morality by rejecting romantic love for responsible eugenic mating. 33 In the United States and Britain family planning reformers Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes advocated the elimination of sexual ignorance and the promotion of contraceptive knowledge and devices on eugenic grounds. 34 Feminists within labour movements on both sides of the Atlantic, however, rejected eugenic restriction of women to the domestic sphere where their sole purpose was to become responsible breeding machines and child nurturers.…”

Section: Opposition and Detatchmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biological determinism, evolutionary fundamentalism and the rise of the genoist society

Porter

2000

Critical Quarterly

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The Eugenization of Love: Sarah Grand and the Morality of Genealogy

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Biology, Contingency and the Problem of Racism in Feminist Discourse

Biology, Contingency and the Problem of Racism in Feminist Discourse

Biological determinism, evolutionary fundamentalism and the rise of the genoist society

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