Linearity has Failed, Progress is an Illusion: Eugenic Ideology and the Presence of the Past

Ann Winfield, Roger Williams University

The role of history and the practice of historicism lay significant claim on present conceptions: truth, identity, and perceptions of relative human worth have all revealed themselves to be both present and embedded in the past. Linearity has failed, the progressive trajectory is an aspirational illusion. This paper is concerned the ways in which eugenic ideology has long provided specific categories and distinctions utilized and structurally embedded in a society that has never truly grappled with its own past, preferring instead to distort, dismantle and deflect. Using collective memory as a tool, we can understand how ideology has shaped and fashioned interpretive action in the present. Eugenic ideology has been bolstered and conscripted for generations by misplaced gaze and narrowed focus: effective analysis and resistance has been fractured further by what Ordover (2003) calls the confederacies of “nationalism, ‘reform-oriented’ liberalism, out-and out homophobia, white supremacy, misogyny, and racism … for the simple reason that even as one falls into relative disrepute, others remain intact” (p. xxvi). Let there be no mistake, from the first hand scratched sketches of human skulls, to the development of evolutionary trees representing human racial progress, to the present health/wealth inequality revealed by a global pandemic it has been Blacks that have been at the bottom, following a blueprint etched into the social psyche centuries ago. Eugenic ideology has provided the porous barrier between deeply embedded racist vitriol and a century of evolving progressive sentiment that has nourished the institutions that shape who we are, how we think, and what possibilities we perceive. Reason itself is a cultural practice, Popkewitz (2001) tells us, necessitating a model of cultural history that is a history of the present, dissolving boundaries between discourse and reality, text and the world.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 182. Expertise: Classification and Power within Organizations