mobilising difference
…the programme of making difference which was at the heart of eugenics and scientific racism more generally was realised by way of social policies which targeted parts of the population of a range of different countries over the course of the late nineteenth and twentieth century.
"The Nuremberg Law for the Protection of Blood and German Honor." Verlag für nationale Literatur, Stuttgart c.1935. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Courtesy of Hans Pauli.
Throughout the twentieth century, the eugenics movement not only supported the development of routine forms of prejudice and racism, but also provided philosophical justification for the development of a range of brutal policies in a number of countries aimed at the “improvement” of populations. In the United States between 1907 and 1963, more than 60,000 people were forcibly sterilized under legislation which targeted individuals deemed to be mentally or physically “unfit”. The majority of these people were poor, indigenous and Black and minority ethnic women (Ordover 2003, Carey 2012, Reilly 2015). Forced sterilizations took place in a number of different countries throughout the twentieth century, most notoriously in Nazi Germany, where almost 400,000 people were forcibly sterilized between 1933 and 1939, and somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 people were murdered as part of negative eugenics programmes (Conroy 2017; Grodin, Miller and Kelly 2018).
Bringing them home. The 1997 Australian Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families.
Between 1941 and 1944 a further six million Jewish people were murdered alongside millions of others including disabled people, Afro-Germans, Roma, non-Jewish Poles, homosexual men, Soviet civilians and prisoners of war, and religious and political opponents of the Nazis. Eugenicist principles also underpinned racist legislation and policies involving mandatory segregation and the control of marriages and removal of children from their families in a number of countries including Australia and South Africa, alongside policies to “improve” the collective health of populations.
While explicit laws to sanction eugenic sterilization were largely repealed during the latter part of the twentieth centuries in most countries, unofficial policies of coerced sterilization continue in many parts of the world, while several countries still employ means of state-dictated population control which are determined by the philosophies of eugenics. Perhaps equally importantly though, ideas from the history of the eugenics movement continue to inform systemic racism, ableism, sexism and homophobia, and ideas relating to what constitutes normal or idealised human bodies and behaviours.
These objects provide ways of understanding how the programme of making difference which was at the heart of the project of eugenics and scientific racism more generally was realised by way of social policies which targeted parts of the population of a range of different countries over the course of the late nineteenth and twentieth century.
“Stop Forced Sterilization.” Poster by Racheal Romero, San Francisco Poster Brigade. Library of Congress. M1977.
Works cited
Carey, Jane. 2012. The Racial Imperatives of Sex: birth control and eugenics in Britain, the United States and Australia in the interwar years. Women's History Review 21.5: 733-752.
Conroy, Melvin. 2017. Nazi Eugenics: Precursors, Policy, Aftermath. New York: Columbia University Press.
Grodin, Michael A., Erin L. Miller and Johnathon I. Kelly. 2018. The Nazi Physicians as Leaders in Eugenics and "Euthanasia": Lessons for Today. American Journal of Public Health 108(1): 53–57. DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2017.304120.
Ordover, Nancy. 2003. American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Reilly, Philip R. 2015. Eugenics and Involuntary Sterilization: 1907-2015. Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 16: 351–368. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-genom-090314-024930.
LDUGC-095ACCESSION NUMBER: A unique identifier assigned to, and achieving initial control of, each acquisition. Assignment of accession numbers typically occurs at the point of accessioning or cataloging.
Sweet Pea Measuring Device, UCL Science Collections (Galton Collection), c.1870s.
Heredity refers to the genetic processes by which certain characteristics are transmitted from parent to offspring....
LDUCPC-SOHO P.6ACCESSION NUMBER: A unique identifier assigned to, and achieving initial control of, each acquisition. Assignment of accession numbers typically occurs at the point of accessioning or cataloging.
Gold IUD and Uterus, UCL Pathology Collections, 1945-1988.
This gold-plated stem pessary is an early version of an intrauterine device (IUD). This contraceptive device....
LDUAC-UCL1319ACCESSION NUMBER: A unique identifier assigned to, and achieving initial control of, each acquisition. Assignment of accession numbers typically occurs at the point of accessioning or cataloging.
Ceramic head, “Ceramic caricature male head, tongue sticking out”, Institute of Archaeology Collections, date of manufacture unknown, collected early 20th Century.
Perhaps in an attempt to comprehend our exceptionalism in a universe of unknowns, our attempts to reflect....
LDUCE-UC33278ACCESSION NUMBER: A unique identifier assigned to, and achieving initial control of, each acquisition. Assignment of accession numbers typically occurs at the point of accessioning or cataloging.
Racial ‘type’ head from Memphis, Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology, date of manufacture unknown, purchased or excavated early 20th century.
In the Petrie Museum at UCL, there is a painted terracotta sculpture of a head, which was either....
LDUEC-I.0035ACCESSION NUMBER: A unique identifier assigned to, and achieving initial control of, each acquisition. Assignment of accession numbers typically occurs at the point of accessioning or cataloging.
Southern African Beaded Girdle, UCL Ethnography Collections, late 19th/early 20th century.
In the UCL Ethnography Collection, one can find object I.0035, a beaded Zulu girdle from South Africa that belonged to a young girl....
LDUGC-040ACCESSION NUMBER: A unique identifier assigned to, and achieving initial control of, each acquisition. Assignment of accession numbers typically occurs at the point of accessioning or cataloging.
Hair Colour Gauge, UCL Science Collections (Galton Collection), 1905.
In the Galton Collection at UCL lies a peculiar object. What could be mistaken for a large glasses case....