DOCSLIB.ORG

Degeneration, Protestantism, and Social Democracy the Case of Alcoholism and “Illiberal” Policies and Practices in Denmark 1900–43 Sevelsted, Anders

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Degeneration, Protestantism, and Social Democracy the Case of Alcoholism and “Illiberal” Policies and Practices in Denmark 1900–43 Sevelsted, Anders Degeneration, Protestantism, and Social Democracy The Case of Alcoholism and “Illiberal” Policies and Practices in Denmark 1900–43 Sevelsted, Anders Document Version Accepted author manuscript Published in: Social Science History DOI: 10.1017/ssh.2018.35 Publication date: 2019 License CC BY-NC-ND Citation for published version (APA): Sevelsted, A. (2019). Degeneration, Protestantism, and Social Democracy: The Case of Alcoholism and “Illiberal” Policies and Practices in Denmark 1900–43. Social Science History, 43(1), 87-111. https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2018.35 Link to publication in CBS Research Portal General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us ([email protected]) providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 27. Sep. 2021 Degeneration, Protestantism, and Social Democracy: The Case of Alcoholism and “Illiberal” Policies and Practices in Denmark 1900–43 Anders Sevelsted Journal article (Accepted manuscript*) Please cite this article as: Sevelsted, A. (2019). Degeneration, Protestantism, and Social Democracy: The Case of Alcoholism and “Illiberal” Policies and Practices in Denmark 1900–43. Social Science History, 43(1), 87-111. DOI: 10.1017/ssh.2018.35 This article has been published in a revised form in Social Science History http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2018.35 This version is published under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND. No commercial re-distribution or re-use allowed. Derivative works cannot be distributed. © Social Science History Association, 2018 * This version of the article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the publisher’s final version AKA Version of Record. Uploaded to CBS Research Portal: May 2019 Degeneration, Protestantism, and social democracy: The case of alcoholism and ‘illiberal’ policies and practices in Denmark 1900 – 1943 Abstract Through a case study of the emergence of rights-infringing ‘illiberal’ policies and practices in the field of Danish alcohol treatment 1900-1943, this article shows how new scientific ideas on ‘degeneration’ as the cause of alcoholism and the use of force in treatment were adapted and promoted by Protestant revivalist groups and Social Democrats alike. The article analyses how new scientific ideas resonated with cultural ideals of Danish Social Democracy and evangelical temperance organization the Blue Cross. The article challenges the established view in the literature that eugenic and similar ‘illiberal’ practices were the result of a ‘high modernist’ state ethos and ‘communitarian-organic’ thinking on the left. Building on secondary literature and archival sources, it is shown that ‘illiberal’ policies and practices as well as theories of heredity in the case of Danish alcohol treatment were adopted as the result of common liberal-conservative ideals regarding the value of family shared by Social Democrats and Protestant activists across the civil society and state spheres. Introduction In 1934, Axel Garboe, natural history scholar, priest, and active member of the evangelical temperance organization The Blue Cross, and Karl Kristian Steincke, social democrat and minister of social affairs, both contributed to an edited volume on eugenics called “Heritage and Race” (Socialpolitisk Forening 1934). Garboe’s background in science and revivalist Protestantism is thought-provoking, and the collaboration between a leader in the mainly secular Social 1 Democratic Party and a revivalist temperance adherer immediately raises questions about the relationship between religion, science, and social democracy, as well as between civil society and the state. In interwar period Denmark, groups such as the mentally ill, prostitutes, criminals, vagrants, and alcoholics were increasingly targeted by scientifically inspired ‘illiberal’ policies and practices such as confinement, restrictions on access to marriage, sterilization, castration, and disenfranchisement to replace or supplement the older ‘moral’ techniques of deterrence and discipline such as the poor house and forced labor sentences. Such measures were common in most ‘Western’ countries, and recent international sociological and historical scholarship has explained this fact through the existence of a ‘high modernist’ state ethos, a communitarian- organic social democratic ideology, and the absence of strong civil society actors such as trade unions, churches, or NGOs. The Danish case is in this regard interesting, since both a strong state and a strong civil society deeply involved in social relief existed. This makes the Danish case well suited to test the ‘high modernity’ thesis: What role did civil society actors play in resisting or promoting illiberal policies and practices in the field of alcohol treatment in Denmark? How could both Social Democracy and Protestant civil society agree on a scientifically inspired interpretation of alcoholism as hereditary, and on the use of force in treatment? Specifically, how were such ideas, policies, and practices integrated into the ideational tradition of Protestant temperance adherers and Social Democrats? I challenge the ‘high modernist’ thesis by showing that the Blue Cross did not protest the state’s eugenicist and illiberal policy measures, they promoted theories of degeneration and heredity early in the period, and in fact publically called for forcible commitment of alcoholics years before the state’s laws were introduced. I instead suggest that the emergence of 2 discriminatory policies and practices in the Danish field of alcohol treatment should be attributed to the way that specific actors took advantage of institutional and discursive opportunity structures at the time, i.e. aligned themselves with the new scientific discourse and promoted specific practices. I show that the case of forcible treatment of alcoholics was not plainly one of ‘leftist high modernity’, but, paradoxically, ‘illiberalism’ had liberal roots; specifically, ‘bourgeois’ rather than ‘progressivist’ roots. Illiberal practices were made possible because of a common conservative cultural ideal of the family shared by Social Democrats and Protestant activists across the civil society and state spheres that resonated with scientific worries about ‘degeneration’. Research on eugenics, illiberal policies, civil society, and the state Eugenic policies are arguably the most illiberal of illiberal policies, i.e. initiatives that suspend civil, political or social rights for the good of a greater community. Such initiatives flourished in Europe, especially from ca 1920 to 1960. Frank Dikötter expresses a common understanding of the reasons for this: “Open democracies with a vibrant civil society, such as Britain and the Netherlands, were generally less inclined to adopt extreme eugenic proposals than authoritarian regimes in Germany and the People's Republic of China” (Dikötter 1998: 476). Dikötter links eugenics and ‘illiberal practices’ to totalitarianism and the ethos of the ‘high modern’ ‘gardening state’ (see Lucassen 2010). This view, informed by the sociology of Michel Foucault, Zygmunt Bauman, and James C. Scott (Bauman 1998; Scott 1998; Foucault 1995), contributes the illiberal practices to a strong centralized state guided by ‘technocrats’ with the ambition to create social order and productive citizens (Dikötter 1998; Weiner 2003; Mottier 2008; Hauss and Ziegler 2008). Dikötter supplements this with a thesis regarding the absence of strong civil society actors, such as trade unions, churches, or NGOs (cf. Scott 1998: 4f), again with the Netherlands and Britain as examples (Dikötter 1998: 476ff). 3 In relation to eugenics and illiberal policies, Leo Lucassen has nuanced the ‘strong state – weak civil society’ thesis in an article on the relationship between ‘the left’ and eugenics. In a comparison of six European cases (Sweden, Britain, Switzerland, France (and Belgium), the Netherlands, and Germany), Lucassen finds a number of inhibiting factors for eugenic thinking and measures to be taken up by the left, typically Social Democrats: 1) Not a strong civil society per se, but a ‘variegated and strong civil society’, where cultural heterogeneity dampens opposition to radical social policies, as in ‘pillarized’ Netherlands. 2) Related to this, Catholicism and the Catholic Church’s well-known resistance to all interventions in procreation. 3) The influence of Neo- Lamarckianism with its emphasis on social factors’ interplay with genetic predispositions, and finally what Lucassen stresses the most: 4) The interpretation of socialism in terms of class rather than in terms of ‘communitarian-organic thinking’. It was, according to Lucassen, the communitarian-organic conception of society among socialists, Social Democrats, and ‘progressives’ as an organic whole that allowed for the rights of the individual to be suspended in the name of a perceived greater good. This view was promoted by The Fabian Society and the Webbs in Britain, and by the Myrdals in Sweden. Much research has been done on the links between socialism/social democracy
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Evolution in Cultural Anthropology
    UC Berkeley Anthropology Faculty Publications Title Evolution in Cultural Anthropology Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5pk146vg Journal American Anthropologist, 48(2) Author Lowie, Robert H. Publication Date 1946-06-01 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California EVOLUTION IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: A REPLY TO LESLIE WHITE By ROBERT H. LOWIE LESLIE White's last three articles in the A merican A nthropologist1 require a reply since in my opinion they obscure vital issues. Grave matters, he clamors, are at stake. Obscurantists are plotting to defame Lewis H. Morgan and to undermine the theory of evolution. Professor White should relax. There are no underground machinations. Evolution as a scientific doctrine-not as a farrago of immature metaphysical notions-is secure. Morgan's place in the history of anthropology will turn out to be what he deserves, for, as Dr. Johnson said, no man is ever written down except by himself. These articles by White raise important questions. As a victim of his polemical shafts I should like to clarify the issues involved. I premise that I am peculiarly fitted to enter sympathetically into my critic's frame of mind, for at one time I was as devoted to Ernst Haeckel as White is to Morgan. Haeckel had solved the riddles of the universe for me. ESTIMATES OF MORGAN Considering the fate of many scientific men at the hands of their critics, it does not appear that Morgan has fared so badly. Americans bestowed on him the highest honors during his lifetime, eminent European scholars held him in esteem.
    [Show full text]
  • Degeneration Theory in Naturalist Novels of Benito Pérez Galdós
    Degeneration Theory in Naturalist Novels of Benito Pérez Galdós A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Michael Wenley Stannard IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Ofelia Ferrán, Advisor April 2011 © Michael Wenley Stannard 2011 i Acknowledgements I should like to record my sincere thanks to Ana Paula Fereira, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities) for having given me the opportunity to realize a dream of many years. My graduate career in Minnesota has been a life-changing experience, and I would not have missed it for anything. Financial support from the department to study at the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, to study Portuguese at the Universidade de Lisboa in Lisbon and to contribute to a conference at Universidad Complutense in Madrid helped significantly in rounding out my graduate student experience, as well as enabling me to collect essential material for this dissertation. I should like to thank my adviser, Ofelia Ferrán, for her help and guidance and to record my additional debt to Toni Dorca and Jaime Hanneken, who listened generously and counseled. To Toni Dorca I owe my introduction to Galdós‘s Naturalist novels which has formed the background of this dissertation. I have seen myself fundamentally as a galdosista at heart ever since. I should like to thank J.B. Shank for allowing me to prevail upon him to direct me in a course of reading that proved invaluable preparation for the study of biological and medical thought in eighteenth and nineteenth century France.
    [Show full text]
  • Machen, Lovecraft, and Evolutionary Theory
    i DEADLY LIGHT: MACHEN, LOVECRAFT, AND EVOLUTIONARY THEORY Jessica George A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy School of English, Communication and Philosophy Cardiff University March 2014 ii Abstract This thesis explores the relationship between evolutionary theory and the weird tale in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through readings of works by two of the writers most closely associated with the form, Arthur Machen (1863-1947) and H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), it argues that the weird tale engages consciously, even obsessively, with evolutionary theory and with its implications for the nature and status of the “human”. The introduction first explores the designation “weird tale”, arguing that it is perhaps less useful as a genre classification than as a moment in the reception of an idea, one in which the possible necessity of recalibrating our concept of the real is raised. In the aftermath of evolutionary theory, such a moment gave rise to anxieties around the nature and future of the “human” that took their life from its distant past. It goes on to discuss some of the studies which have considered these anxieties in relation to the Victorian novel and the late-nineteenth-century Gothic, and to argue that a similar full-length study of the weird work of Machen and Lovecraft is overdue. The first chapter considers the figure of the pre-human survival in Machen’s tales of lost races and pre-Christian religions, arguing that the figure of the fairy as pre-Celtic survival served as a focal point both for the anxieties surrounding humanity’s animal origins and for an unacknowledged attraction to the primitive Other.
    [Show full text]
  • Eugenics, Modernity and the Rationalization of Morality in Early Republican Turkey Efe Atabay
    Eugenics, Modernity and the Rationalization of Morality in Early Republican Turkey Efe Atabay Institute of Islamic Studies McGill University, Montreal July, 2009 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Masters of Arts - Thesis © Efe Atabay 2009 Library and Archives Bibliothèque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de l’édition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-61516-4 Our file Notre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-61516-4 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non- L’auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant à la Bibliothèque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par télécommunication ou par l’Internet, prêter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des thèses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, à des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non- support microforme, papier, électronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L’auteur conserve la propriété du droit d’auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protège cette thèse. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la thèse ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent être imprimés ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation.
    [Show full text]
  • 21 Chapter Three the Contribution Of
    CHAPTER THREE THE CONTRIBUTION OF ANTHROPOLOGY Anthropology is one the chief sources of methodology and theory for Cultural Studies. As we have discussed in Chapter Two it was instrumental in widening the study of culture from questions of value into scientic research. A number of different approaches have emerged in anthropology since the nineteenth century as the science has changed its theoretical constructs and insight in the study of humankind. All of these have had an impact on Cultural Studies. SOCIAL EVOLUTIONISM In the early years of anthropology, anthropologists and other scholars believed that culture evolves in a uniform and progressive manner. They built on from Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection attempting to track the development of culture through time. Just as animals besides humans were thought to evolve into increasing complexity, so too were cultures thought to progress from a simple to complex states. It was thought that most societies pass through the same series of stages to arrive, ultimately, at a common end. Change was thought to originate from within the culture, so development was thought to be internally determined. The notion of dividing the ethnological record into evolutionary stages ranging from primitive to civilized was basic to the ideas of the nineteenth century social evolutionists. Drawing upon Enlightenment thought, Darwin’s work, and new cross-cultural, historical, and archaeological evidence, a whole generation of social evolutionary theorists emerged such as Tylor and Morgan. They developed rival schemes of overall social and cultural progress, as well as the origins of different institutions such as religion, marriage, and the family.
    [Show full text]
  • Jazz Epidemics and Deep Set Diseases: the De-Pathologization
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: English, Department of Department of English 5-2016 Jazz Epidemics and Deep Set Diseases: The e-D Pathologization of the Black Body in the Work of Three Harlem Renaissance Writers Shane C. Hunter University of Nebraska - Lincoln Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishdiss Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, and the Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons Hunter, Shane C., "Jazz Epidemics and Deep Set Diseases: The e-PD athologization of the Black Body in the Work of Three Harlem Renaissance Writers" (2016). Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: Department of English. 110. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishdiss/110 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: Department of English by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. JAZZ EPIDEMICS AND DEEP SET DISEASES: THE DE-PATHOLOGIZATION OF THE BLACK BODY IN THE WORK OF THREE HARLEM RENAISSANCE WRITERS by Shane Hunter A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Major: English Under the Supervision of Professor Maureen Honey Lincoln, Nebraska May, 2016 JAZZ EPIDEMICS AND DEEP SET DISEASES: THE DE-PATHOLOGIZATION OF THE BLACK BODY IN THE WORK OF THREE HARLEM RENAISSANCE WRITERS Shane Hunter, Ph.D.
    [Show full text]
  • Artistic Virtuosity and Degeneration Theory in Fin De Siècle Fiction
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Angels and Degenerates: Artistic Virtuosity and Degeneration Theory in Fin de Siècle Fiction DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in English by Rosanna Nunan Dissertation Committee: Associate Professor Hugh Roberts, Chair Associate Professor Ann Van Sant Associate Professor Laura O’Connor 2015 © 2015 Rosanna Nunan DEDICATION To Susan and Tom Nunan, in thanks for all of the wonderful opportunities they’ve given me. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv CURRICULUM VITAE v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION vi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: Urban Depravity, Rural Unsophistication: Hereditary Taint in Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles 25 Degeneration, The City, and Social Purity 31 The Aristocracy and the City versus the Unsophisticated Country 47 Sensibility and the Degenerate: Tess as Artist 57 Conclusion 66 CHAPTER 2: The Innovations of Art and Science in H.G. Wells’s The Wonderful Visit 72 Classificatory Thought through the Lens of Degeneration Theory 75 Modern Art and Proper Scientific Inquiry 93 Conclusion: Modern Music and Morality in a Taxonomical World 108 CHAPTER 3: Rethinking Hysteria through Artistic Genius in Trilby and Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death 118 Victorian Reconsiderations of Hysteria and Degenerative Illness 122 Writing the Moral Hysteric 130 The Psychology of Hysteria and Musical Virtuosity 138 Conclusion 153 120Data Interpretation 135 CHAPTER 4: Artistic Suppression and the Woman of Genius: The Feminist Response to Francis Galton 158 Feminists and Degeneration Theory at the Fin de Siècle 160 Sarah Grand’s The Beth Book and the Genius Temperament 170 Destruction of Musical Genius in The Daughters of Danaus 184 Conclusion 205 BIBLIOGRAPHY 213 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank my dissertation chair, Professor Hugh Roberts, for sticking with this project from start to finish, despite a rather circuitous drafting process.
    [Show full text]
  • Where Music Meets Science: Traces of Nineteenth-Century Scientific Naturalism in Representations of Madness in Richard Strauss’S Salome
    Where Music Meets Science: Traces of Nineteenth-Century Scientific Naturalism in Representations of Madness in Richard Strauss’s Salome Charlotte Armstrong MA by Research University of York Music September 2015 Abstract This thesis seeks to explore the impact of scientific theory on representations of madness in opera. More specifically, it questions: to what extent do dialogues of nineteenth-century scientific naturalism manifest themselves in the depiction of Salome the title character in Richard Strauss’s ? The intellectual climate of Strauss’s Europe may have caused the protagonist to be perceived as one of opera’s ‘madwomen’ by turn of the century audiences. Much literature on the work raises questions about the protagonist’s mental state, and arguably, madness Salome is at the heart of the opera. Though dissected by musicologists for decades, has long escaped analysis from the dedicated viewpoint of scientific history. The current study begins with a review of existing literature and Salome. an introduction of key themes, which forms a foundation for a case study of Traces of the formative evolutionary principles of Darwin and Spencer can be recognized within Strauss’s opera, and this thesis outlines the ideas of evolutionary naturalism and natural selection from their scientific origins, to their emergence within dialogues about Salome. the development of music, and their appearance upon the operatic stage within This thesis does not claim the existence of any direct allusions in the opera to scientific naturalism, but rather, aims to showcase the (possibly indirect) engagement with ideas relatSalome’sing to mental illness within a naturalistic framework at the time surrounding composition.
    [Show full text]
  • The Degeneration Paradigm in the Western Study of World Religions
    THE DEGENERATION PARADIGM IN THE WESTERN STUDY OF WORLD RELIGIONS Evan M. Zuesse PRECIS Western scholarship has primarily interpreted other religions to be in a state of de­ cline. Typically, the past traditions of non-Christian religions have been elevated as their culminations, while present forms are viewed as declining shadows of former glorious tradi­ tions. The derivation of the hypothesis of decadence is traced to "the Western experience of colonialism and imperialism," during which even the most liberal interpreters were con­ vinced of the superiority of their own culture. The confrontation of missionaries and scholars with religion in India provides a case in point. But everywhere we encounter the "white man's burden" syndrome-the moral imperative of converting all non-Western cul­ tures to the superior Western prototype. Evidently, viewing the unique responses of other cultures to similar problems has been threatening to the faith in the efficacy of our own Western responses. Other factors produced the judgment that non-Western cultures were degenerate: (1) The theological concept that only Christianity was endowed with a special "supernatu­ ral" grace, that "other" cultures were merely "natural," was considerably evident, especially in nineteenth-century perspectives on Chinese and Indian cultures. (2) Later, the same Indian scriptures were elevated as a "primordial revelation" by poets and philosophers of the Romantic period. (3) Nationalism also had considerable influence, illustrated particu­ larly by nineteenth-century German intellectuals. (4) "A literary, textual approach to cul­ ture" constituted another factor producing the "degeneration paradigm." This approach led to numerous misunderstandings as is discussed, and ultimately to a denumanization of non-Western cultures.
    [Show full text]
  • Degeneration Theory
    Degeneration theory “Degeneration” redirects here. For other uses, see entists including Edwin Chadwick, Henry Mayhew and Degeneration (disambiguation). Charles Booth voiced realistic concerns about the decline This article is about the social-evolutionary meaning of of public health in the urban life of the British working degeneration. For other uses, see Degeneracy (disam- class. The everyday experience of contact with the work- biguation). ing classes gave rise to a kind of horrified fascination with their perceived reproductive energies, which appeared to threaten middle-class culture. Degeneration theory was a widely influential concept in the borderlands of social and biological science in Secondly, the proto-evolutionary biology and transforma- the 19th century.[1][2][3] Degenerationists feared that civ- tist speculations of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and other nat- ilization might be in decline and that the causes of de- ural historians—taken together with the Baron von Cu- cline lay in biological change. These ideas derived from vier's theory of extinctions—played an important role in pre-scientific concepts of heredity with Lamarckian em- establishing a sense of the unsettled nature of human so- phasis on biological development through purpose and ciety. The polygenic theories of racial origins, influenced habit. Degeneration concepts were often associated with by Robert Knox in his The Races of Men (1850), were authoritarian political attitudes, including nationalism, firmly rejected by Charles Darwin who, along with James militarism, and racial science. The theory originated in Cowles Prichard, generally supported a single African racial concepts of ethnicity, as recorded in the writings origin for the entire human species.
    [Show full text]
  • Critique of Anthropology
    Critique of Anthropology http://coa.sagepub.com/ Colonial Perspectives in the Construction of the Psychotic Patient as Primitive Man Andreas Heinz Critique of Anthropology 1998 18: 421 DOI: 10.1177/0308275X9801800404 The online version of this article can be found at: http://coa.sagepub.com/content/18/4/421 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for Critique of Anthropology can be found at: Email Alerts: http://coa.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://coa.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://coa.sagepub.com/content/18/4/421.refs.html >> Version of Record - Dec 1, 1998 What is This? Downloaded from coa.sagepub.com by guest on January 17, 2012 Article Colonial Perspectives in the Construction of the Psychotic Patient as Primitive Man Andreas Heinz Department of Neurology of the Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum Abstract▪ Evolutionary concepts about the hierarchical organization of the brain and mind dominated schizophrenia during the last hundred years. These theories compared psychotic patients with ’primitive people’ and suggested that both do not master rationality, a function of the highest level of mental develop- ment. While ’primitives’ supposedly never reached this level, psychotic patients were supposed to have lost their higher mental functions in the disease process. Evolutionary concepts thus allowed to construct social hierarchies as biological stages in a unilinear development of the human race. Structures of domination in the colonies were coded as developmental differences. Placing psychotic patients in the position thus defined proved dangerous for the patients, who ulti- mately were confronted with the techniques of exclusion and extermination developed in the colonies.
    [Show full text]
  • Modernist Genre Decadence: from H. G. Wells to William S. Burroughs
    LEN GUTKIN Modernist Genre Decadence: From H. G. Wells to William S. Burroughs Preliminary: Dandies and Drudges from Carlyle to Burroughs In Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus (1836), the satirical sartorial philosopher Diogenes Teufesldrockh predicts an apocalyptic future in which all of England has been drawn off into two opposed poles: a “Dandiacal Sect,” lounging around in elaborate and expensive clothing, and a “Drudge Sect,” “Poor-Slaves” who live in “dark dwellings” and can afford no better food than potatoes and salted herring. “To me it seems probable that these two Sects will one day part England between them,” Teufelsdrockh explains. Carlyle expresses anxiety about the extremes produced by a rapidly industrializing England by likening his sects to two great “Electric Machines,” one positively and the other negatively charged. These opposed bodies will come to thunderous conflict: Hitherto you see only partial transient sparkles and sputters: but wait a little, till the entire nation is in an electric state: till your whole vital Electricity, no longer healthfully Neutral, is cut into two isolated portions of Positive and Negative (of Money and of Hunger); and stands there bottled up in two World-Batteries! The stirring of a child’s finger brings the two together; and then—What then? The Earth is but shivered into impalpable smoke by that Doom’s thunder-peal; the Sun misses one of his Planets in Space, and thenceforth there are no eclipses of the Moon.1 In The Time Machine (1895), H. G. Wells would give Carlyle’s conflict between dandies and drudges a scientific twist.
    [Show full text]