The Rhetoric of Eugenics in Anglo-American Thought (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Rhetoric of Eugenics in Anglo-American Thought Pauline M. H. Mazumdar Marouf Arif Hasian, Jr. The Rhetoric of Eugenics in Anglo-American Thought. University of Georgia Humanities Center Series on Science and the Humanities. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996. x + 265 pp. $40.00. This book tries out a new twist on an amply documented and much-discussed subject, the public discourse in English on eugenics. Hasian uses the vocabulary and concepts current in a Department of Speech and Communication, where rhetoric is the central matter of study, to reexamine the attempts at persuasion and dissuasion of the eugenists, their friends and fellow-travelers, and their enemies. Rhetoric, he states, plays a central part in the construction of scientific knowledge. A postmodern consciousness has promoted it from a mere epiphenomenon to an important means of conquering ideological terrain and keeping it under control. The idea is attractive. It leads the author to identify a set of so-called ideographs, which he finds represented over and over in the rhetoric and narrative tales of both the eugenists and their opponents. These include “biological necessity,” “nature,” and “struggle for existence.” The word eugenics itself might mean the preservation of the germ plasm of an individual, a nation, or the white race, either directly by selective breeding or environmentally, by getting rid of race poisons such as alcoholism. In terms of numbers, it might mean the promotion [End Page 729] of the “fit” as well as the repression of the “unfit,” or the control of the “unfit” by the “fit.” The ideograph “eugenics” could be interpreted in many different ways, which, says Hasian, accounts for its mass appeal. The application of this approach is successful in some instances, less successful in others. It is most apposite in the case of liberal and leftist reactions to eugenics, where acceptance shades into attack with little change in vocabulary. The chapter on black reactions to eugenics is both a good example of Hasian’s technique in action and also, as far as I know, new material. He shows that some American blacks refused to accept the white eugenists’ attacks on their humanity, and adapted the eugenic concepts of nature and struggle to their own use. Many agreed on the importance of race betterment. One black writer claimed in 1924 that “eugenics is interested in breeding for tomorrow a better Negro, one more anxious, more capable and more courageous to assume a larger share of our economic, political and social responsibilities. No one now doubts the unusual abilities of the individual Negro. . . . What the Negro . . . needs now is more attention given to the group” (p. 64). The chapter on women is less convincing. Here the author says—and I agree with him here—that women, especially feminists and progressives, were among the primary social actors on the eugenics scene. He suggests, however, that the ideograph “voluntary motherhood” was used by feminists who saw themselves as the victims of hard-line eugenics. Unlimited motherhood in the name of the state and of “biological necessity” could no longer be accepted by the New Woman. I would like to rearrange this argument. I think the feminists of the period, in England and in Canada at least, were very often hard-line eugenists themselves. The call for “voluntary motherhood” was a device to promote birth control and thus limit the breeding of undesirables of the pauper class: we know that the birth control movement in Britain was subsidized under the table by the Eugenics Society. It is a mistake to read the feelings of today’s feminists into remarks made in the years between the two world wars. Women of the period felt that reproduction was their special “biologically necessary” area of power and responsibility, and a popular movement that was concerned with reproduction was important and empowering. They wanted to be part of it. In this case, Hasian’s explicit use of a confusion between pro and contra in the use of the same ideographic elements lets him down. Hasian’s final section is on the Human Genome Project. Is this eugenics too? he asks. His method of seeking out a set of telling ideographs is...