4/16/2023 0 Comments Electric sheep windows 10![]() ![]() Sawyer's Neanderthal Parallax 1 trilogy comes to mind here-scholars have yet to place a detailed eugenics examination within a posthumanist framework. Even though the science fiction genre consistently provides material for posthumanists to scrutinize, and science fiction authors have allegorized eugenics several times-Robert J. The gap between posthumanism and eugenics also puzzles me because of the prevalence of science fiction texts that utilize eugenics in their narratives. Unfortunately, such scholarship is scarce. Since victims of eugenics are identified as animals or as a different species, we would think that scholars of posthumanism would draw a precise connection between their area of expertise and the specifics of eugenics: the historical context, the propagandistic practices, the formal medical tests and procedures. Gross, retarded, animalistic, early primate type individual. Graceful, intelligently curious, active young homo sapiens, and on the other the Indeed the picture of comparison between the normal child and the idiot mightĪlmost be a comparison between two separate species. Writing for a 1950 edition of the American Journal of Mental Deficiency, eugenicist Leonard le Vann states that In both medical and sociological discourse, people with physical and mental disabilities-referred to in this essay as victims of eugenics-have been described as others, animals, retards, monsters and anomalies, among other pejoratives. First of all, scholars of posthumanism often concern themselves with the margins of humanity: animals, others, monsters, and similar figures. That posthuman scholars have not closely examined the cultural implications of the American eugenics movement is puzzling for a few reasons. Through its use of the language of eugenics-that is, using language that creates a dichotomy between "normal" and "abnormal" while privileging the normal above the abnormal-the novel strongly suggests that this culture made an impression on Dick, who satirized this culture, undermining its harmful posthuman agenda. Californian eugenics discourse proved effective: of the approximately sixty thousand people who were sterilized in the United States, almost half of them were sterilized in California (Black 7). As Alexandra Stern states in her book Eugenic Nation, the measures the California government undertook, which included proposing bills to extend "the sterilization law to prisons, correctional schools, reformatories, and detention camps," in addition to the sterilization law itself, "illustrate the extent to which ideas about the dangers and costs of hereditary degeneracy pervaded California government and culture" (83). Dick"), the teenaged Philip likely would have known about and seen the effects of the sterilization and segregation laws that state enacted. Growing up in Berkeley, California (Sutin, "Philip K. When Dick was writing his novel in the 1960s, the American eugenics movement was still lingering, fresh in the minds of the American public. In doing so, Dick creates a satire replete with historical eugenic allusions, a novel that criticizes eugenics as a posthuman endeavour that emphasizes reason as the sole human characteristic while eliminating human diversity and empathy for others. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? situates eugenics within a specifically American context. ![]() However, such studies tend to be too broad they tend to focus on the bigger idea of eugenics-improving the human race through the science of eliminating the weak-rather than focusing on a specific historical and social context. Not to say that posthumanists have not studied the broad significances of eugenics, because they have Paul Lauritzen's article "Stem Cells, Biotechnology, and Human Rights: Implications for a Posthuman Future" and Nicholas Pethes's "Terminal Men: Biotechnological Experimentation and the Reshaping of 'The Human' in Medical Thrillers" are two such examples. ![]() While posthumanist scholars have explored topics ranging from animal rights to science fiction, they have not closely examined the cultural implications of the American eugenics movement. ![]()
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