Why Tell This Parable? Some Ethical Reflections on the Dionne Quintuplets

Abstract

Cultural studies dlscovers Dionne Quintuplets. Inevitable and welcome: what better illustration of power of professional discourses, logic of the gaze, demarcation of normal from pathological? Quintland was Foucauldian theatre par excellence -- and although Michel Foucault is rarely mentioned in these articles, his spectre haunts almost all of them. Rather than merely adding new empirical material to Pierre Berton's 1977 account, these thoughtful articles suggest a new way of telling this story that unsettles all old categories (even that of childhood).Briefly and schematically, has had three moments: an initial naive, heartfelt celebration, fed by their promoters and state, and diffused through newly refined arts of advertising, of miracle of life and cuteness of babies; a second - order liberal humanist, somewhat anti - modern historiography, discernibly echoing politics of 1960s, critical of exploitation of Quints and of excesses of modern science, yet also reclaiming this experience for Canadian culture; and finally, this new skeptical school, turning its cool gaze on all those discourses and technologies of power through which Dionne girls were transformed into the Quints. For these third - generation Dionnologists, crucial task is analysis of categories and disciplines: Quints are reconceptualized as sites, on which were staged manoeuvres of priests and politicians, clinicians and hucksters, doctors and nurses, not to mention rival ideals of class, gender, and ethnicity. And insofar as this new narrative undoubtedly captures much of what was surely case, and does so in most disturbing and interesting fashion, it marks a real advance. And yet...IIAnd yet, I'm left asking myself some simple (some might say simpleminded) questions. Why did this happen? Should it have happened? Why are we retelling this story today? These sound like silly questions because they bring to Dionnology explicitly ethical considerations. Historians are largely trained to treat ethical discussions as embarrassing outbreaks, like acne, to be remedied with clear, refreshing balm of empiricism and common sense; cultural studies is even more hostile to formal ethics, mainly because a theoretical tradition so influenced by Foucault (and consequently by Nietzsche) is bound to question any universal, teleological, or even general framework of ethical reason as a holdover from discredited narratives of humanism.(f.1)Even so, I'm surprised by absence in this particular case of much overt ethical reasoning: it just calls out for it. Not to be confused with a simplistic hunt for heroes and villains (wisely avoided by everyone here), this process of reasoning rather would mean being clear about ethical assumptions that ground research. Yet nobody talks directly about ethics in this issue (with honourable exception of Mariana Valverde, who makes powerful use of deeply ethical concept of tragedy). But isn't it precisely ethical gravity of this case that makes it so compelling? If these girls had merely grown up in northern Ontario, unnoticed and unexploited, or if they had enjoyed pleasantly remunerative careers endorsing soap and cigarettes, sheltered by a middle - class Anglo family and an adoring public, would we now still be talking about them? It's garish juxtaposition of farce and tragedy, Quintland and legalized kidnapping, little people and massive forces, pious liberal rhetoric of rights and squalid liberal realities of property that make us remember Dionnes. The tale of Dionnes seems a parable that speaks to a condition of capitalist postmodernity, sharing as many of us now do a habitus eerily similar to theirs -- one experienced in company of strangers, unfolding in context of cultures (no longer taken - for - granted life - worlds but consciously, painfully contrived, artificial life - styles cobbled together from ruins and wreckage of liberal project), and destined to be remembered, if at all, only in anonymous clinical records of professionals and superiors. …