DOCSLIB.ORG

Improving on Nature: Eugenics in Utopian Fiction

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Improving on Nature: Eugenics in Utopian Fiction 1 Improving on Nature: Eugenics in Utopian Fiction Submitted by Christina Jane Lake to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English, January 2017 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright materials and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approve for the award of a degree by this or any other university. (Signature)............................................................................................................. 2 3 Abstract There has long been a connection between the concept of utopia as a perfect society and the desire for perfect humans to live in this society. A form of selective breeding takes place in many fictional utopias from Plato’s Republic onwards, but it is only with the naming and promotion of eugenics by Francis Galton in the late nineteenth century that eugenics becomes a consistent and important component of utopian fiction. In my introduction I argue that behind the desire for eugenic fitness within utopias resides a sense that human nature needs improving. Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) prompted fears of degeneration, and eugenics was seen as a means of restoring purpose and control. Chapter Two examines the impact of Darwin’s ideas on the late nineteenth-century utopia through contrasting the evolutionary fears of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) with Edward Bellamy’s more positive view of the potential of evolution in Looking Backward (1888). Chapter Three uses examples from three late-nineteenth-century feminist utopias to highlight the aspirations within these societies to use science to transform women’s social position and transcend the biological determinism of their reproductive role. Chapter Four focuses on the social theory and utopian fiction of Charlotte Perkins Gilman to illustrate how eugenics becomes part of her vision of progress for women and the human race as a whole. Chapter Five turns to dystopian fiction from H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Charlotte Haldane and Katherine Burdekin to examine how eugenic ideas retained an element of idealism even in the context of the dystopias of the first half of the twentieth century. Chapter Six looks at the fate of eugenics in utopian fiction after the Second World War and argues that the resurgence of utopianism in the form of the ecological utopia continue to rely on eugenics, population control and manipulation of human behaviour to succeed. My conclusion argues that eugenics is a utopian idea with enduring appeal despite the disastrous effects of its practical implementation, and that utopian and dystopian fiction offer an important lens through which to understand the hopes and fears represented by the different versions of eugenics and the current debates over genetic enhancements and transhumanism. 4 Acknowledgements My thanks go to the many people who have supported me in this project. To my supervisor Professor Angelique Richardson for guiding me through the many ethical pitfalls of writing about eugenics, and her valuable input into the development of my ideas and the direction of my research. To both my second supervisors, Dr. Adeline Johns Putra for her encouragement and advice in the difficult early stages of the thesis and Dr. Jason Hall for his enthusiasm and useful comments as it progressed. I’m also grateful for the support from the small but ever helpful Humanities PGR community at Penryn, in particular Rebecca, Andy and Jack, as well as my colleagues in the library, all of whose interest in the project have kept me going. Finally my partner Doug deserves credit for his patience and forbearance during the long six year journey to completing this PhD. 5 Table of Contents Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 4 Table of Contents 5 1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………… 7 1.1 Eugenics and Utopian Fiction 8 1.2 What is Utopian about Eugenics? The Utopianism of Eugenics 14 1.3 Improving on Nature 27 1.4 Argument and Methods 34 2. Darwin Among the Utopians……………………………………….…..… 41 2.1 Survival of the Fittest: Evolution in Utopian Fiction 42 2.2 Butler among the Machines 47 2.3 The Erewhonian Standard 55 2.4 Butler versus Darwin 62 2.5 Bellamy and Positive Evolution 67 2.6 Unnatural Selection: Utopia and Eugenics 76 3. Eugenics in Late-Nineteenth-Century Feminist Utopias…………….. 79 3.1 Amazons, Science and Common Sense 81 3.2 Evolution and Female Superiority in Mary E. Bradley Lane’s Mizora 95 3.3 Unveiling a Parallel: Equality, Cupid’s Garden and Moral Evolution 105 3.4 Conclusion 114 4. Making Better People: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Social Evolution ………………………………………………………………….…… 117 4.1 Tearing off the Top Pattern: the Road to Reform Darwinism 118 4.2 Women and Economics: Gilman’s Dystopian Narrative 123 4.3 Gilman’s Utopian Lands 132 4.4 Gilman and Race 135 4.5 Gilman’s Eugenic Reputation 142 6 5. Eugenics and the “Dystopian Turn” ………………………………..… 158 5.1 H. G. Wells and the Modern Dystopia 160 5.2 Wells, Eugenics and the Death of the Over-Man 172 5.3 Eugenics and the Scientific State 178 5.4 Swastika Night and Nazi Eugenics 191 5.5 Conclusion 198 6. Eugenics in Eden: the Rise of the Post-War Ecotopia………….… 201 6.1 Eugenics and environmentalism after the Second World War 203 6.2 Walden Two: A Green Dystopia? 207 6.3 Aldous Huxley’s Island and the Path to Ecological Enlightenment 219 6.4 Back to Nature: Callenbach’s Ecotopia 234 6.5 Conclusion 246 7. Conclusion……………………………………………………………….. 249 7.1 Sexual reproduction and the 1970s Feminist Utopia 251 7.2 More than Human: Perfect bodies and perfect minds 258 7.3 Some Final Thoughts 265 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………. 269 7 1. Introduction Historically there has always been a tension between the idea of the perfect society and the reality of human behaviour. Eutopia, the good society, is also outopia, nowhere land, a recognition that the perfect society cannot exist in our present world. However, by the nineteenth century, social reformers, inspired by revolutionary ideals and the scientific advances of the day, believed that utopia could be created in the real world. Real utopians communities such as New Lanark or Brook Farm testify to this. But so also do the works of utopian fiction of this era, which whilst retaining fantastical and satirical trappings, focus largely on social reform. Scientists too thought utopia might be achievable. Eugenics, the movement for improving the genetic quality of human populations through directed breeding, offered the hope of creating better people to make utopian ideas a reality. Francis Galton, who coined the term “eugenics” in 1883, suggested that watching for opportunities to intervene in the process of evolution could ensure that “the Utopias in the dreamland of philanthropists may become practical possibilities” (“Presidential” 12). Alongside the drive to make utopian dreams a reality, late-nineteenth-century writers of utopian fiction were confronted with the implications of Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871) which changed the popular perception of humans from divinely created beings to malleable, ever-evolving descendants of animals. The concept of evolution troubled the imagination of writers such as Edward Bulwer- Lytton, Samuel Butler and H. G. Wells, calling into question the inevitability of progress. Evolution by natural selection appeared random and purposeless, leading to fears of degeneration, a discourse popularised in Ray Lankester’s Degeneration: A Chapter in Darwinism (1880) and Max Nordau’s Degeneration (1892). Worse still, the citizens of utopia might not even be human, but the super-evolved descendants of humanity, to whom humans would merely be equivalent to primitive animals. All these elements led to an interest in controlling evolution and harnessing its powers for utopian ends, through replacing natural selection with artificial selection. It was felt that if farmers could improve their stock by breeding from their best animals, then humans could potentially do the same by encouraging the best people to breed. The idea was not new. Plato suggested it in The Republic, and the nineteenth-century Oneida Community attempted to 8 put it into practice under the earlier name of stirpiculture. What was new about Galton’s eugenics was that it put the breeding of humans on an apparently scientific basis, backed up by a whole statistical machinery of tables and formulae from the Eugenics Laboratory (founded in 1907) and the academic credibility of a Chair of Eugenics at University College London, from 1911 onwards. Eugenics was also taken up by social reformers who lobbied for eugenic policies to encourage the fit to breed more and the weak and feeble- minded to breed less. Writers of utopian fiction experimented with these ideas in their work, hoping to force evolution into an upward trajectory which would back up their social imaginings. Eugenics also appealed to the imagination of female writers of utopian fiction, offering women an important role in the evolution of the human race as wives and mothers, and also through their political aspirations to create a more moral society which would promote the mental and physical health of future generations. In my thesis, I explore the connection between the concept of utopia as a perfect society and eugenics, with its negative connotations and horrific consequences when applied in the real world. I argue that utopian ideas helped form eugenics and that eugenic ideas circulating within utopian and dystopian fiction from the late nineteenth century onwards supported the idea that eugenics would improve society. I see utopian fiction as a valuable parallel record to the scientific and social texts on eugenics.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Individuation in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Island
    Maria de Fátima de Castro Bessa Individuation in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Island: Jungian and Post-Jungian Perspectives Faculdade de Letras Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais Belo Horizonte 2007 Individuation in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Island: Jungian and Post-Jungian Perspectives by Maria de Fátima de Castro Bessa Submitted to the Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras: Estudos Literários in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Mestre em Letras: Estudos Literários. Area: Literatures in English Thesis Advisor: Prof. Julio Cesar Jeha, PhD Faculdade de Letras Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais Belo Horizonte 2007 To my daughters Thaís and Raquel In memory of my father Pedro Parafita de Bessa (1923-2002) Bessa i Acknowledgements Many people have helped me in writing this work, and first and foremost I would like to thank my advisor, Julio Jeha, whose friendly support, wise advice and vast knowledge have helped me enormously throughout the process. I could not have done it without him. I would also like to thank all the professors with whom I have had the privilege of studying and who have so generously shared their experience with me. Thanks are due to my classmates and colleagues, whose comments and encouragement have been so very important. And Letícia Magalhães Munaier Teixeira, for her kindness and her competence at PosLit I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. Irene Ferreira de Souza, whose encouragement and support were essential when I first started to study at Faculdade de Letras. I am also grateful to Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) for the research fellowship.
    [Show full text]
  • Race and Membership in American History: the Eugenics Movement
    Race and Membership in American History: The Eugenics Movement Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, Inc. Brookline, Massachusetts Eugenicstextfinal.qxp 11/6/2006 10:05 AM Page 2 For permission to reproduce the following photographs, posters, and charts in this book, grateful acknowledgement is made to the following: Cover: “Mixed Types of Uncivilized Peoples” from Truman State University. (Image #1028 from Cold Spring Harbor Eugenics Archive, http://www.eugenics archive.org/eugenics/). Fitter Family Contest winners, Kansas State Fair, from American Philosophical Society (image #94 at http://www.amphilsoc.org/ library/guides/eugenics.htm). Ellis Island image from the Library of Congress. Petrus Camper’s illustration of “facial angles” from The Works of the Late Professor Camper by Thomas Cogan, M.D., London: Dilly, 1794. Inside: p. 45: The Works of the Late Professor Camper by Thomas Cogan, M.D., London: Dilly, 1794. 51: “Observations on the Size of the Brain in Various Races and Families of Man” by Samuel Morton. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences, vol. 4, 1849. 74: The American Philosophical Society. 77: Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, Charles Davenport. New York: Henry Holt &Co., 1911. 99: Special Collections and Preservation Division, Chicago Public Library. 116: The Missouri Historical Society. 119: The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882; John Singer Sargent, American (1856-1925). Oil on canvas; 87 3/8 x 87 5/8 in. (221.9 x 222.6 cm.). Gift of Mary Louisa Boit, Julia Overing Boit, Jane Hubbard Boit, and Florence D. Boit in memory of their father, Edward Darley Boit, 19.124.
    [Show full text]
  • The Dawn in Erewhon"
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons CUREJ - College Undergraduate Research Electronic Journal College of Arts and Sciences December 2007 Dimensions of Erewhon: The Modern Orpheus in Guy Davenport's "The Dawn in Erewhon" Patrick Dillon [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/curej Recommended Citation Dillon, Patrick, "Dimensions of Erewhon: The Modern Orpheus in Guy Davenport's "The Dawn in Erewhon"" 10 December 2007. CUREJ: College Undergraduate Research Electronic Journal, University of Pennsylvania, https://repository.upenn.edu/curej/23. Revised version, posted 10 December 2007. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/curej/23 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Dimensions of Erewhon: The Modern Orpheus in Guy Davenport's "The Dawn in Erewhon" Abstract In "The Dawn in Erewhon", the concluding novella of Tatlin!, Guy Davenport explores the myth of Orpheus in the context of two storylines: Adriaan van Hovendaal, a thinly veiled version of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and an updated retelling of Samuel Butler's utopian novel Erewhon. Davenport tells the story in a disjunctive style and uses the Orpheus myth as a symbol to refer to a creative sensibility that has been lost in modern technological civilization but is recoverable through art. Keywords Charles Bernstein, Bernstein, Charles, English, Guy Davenport, Davenport, Orpheus, Tatlin, Dawn in Erewhon, Erewhon, ludite, luditism Comments Revised version, posted 10 December 2007. This article is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/curej/23 Dimensions of Erewhon The Modern Orpheus in Guy Davenport’s “The Dawn in Erewhon” Patrick Dillon Introduction: The Assemblage Style Although Tatlin! is Guy Davenport’s first collection of fiction, it is the work of a fully mature artist.
    [Show full text]
  • Thinking Like Grass, with Deleuze in Education?1
    Thinking like Grass, with Deleuze in Education?1 XIAO-JIU LING York University Any beginning is difficult. To begin to talk about Gilles Deleuze is particularly difficult. For one thing, he is a philosopher of immense learning which is tightly tied to his rich studies in French or European intellectual history. He confessed to Michel Cressole in his 1973 letter: “I belong to a generation, one of the last generations, that was more or less bludgeoned to death with the history of philosophy… I myself ‘did’ history of philosophy for a long time, read books on this or that author” (Neg., p. 5-6). Indeed, this aspect of his learning is evident in any of his writings. Hence, for someone like me who had meager background in philosophy and in French literature, to start to read Deleuze was and still is a difficult endeavour. Secondly, Deleuze was an experimenter, a player [joueur]. Not only did he play with canonical works handed down from the past in the western philosophical tradition, ranging from his earlier studies on and with work of Hume, Nietzsche, then Kant, Bergson, Spinoza, and later Leibniz (in the order of his related publications), but he also experimented with thinking beyond the traditional boarders of philosophy. In his own words, he “compensated in various ways” (Neg., p. 5-6) in finding new rules to philosophizing. In this effort, he drew sources from and critiqued in the domain of Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies Volume 7 Number 2 2009 Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies psychoanalysis, literature (most notably Proust, Sacher-Masoch and Kafka) as well as other areas of the arts, such as painting, theatre and cinema.
    [Show full text]
  • The Ideological Origins of the Population Association of America
    Fairfield University DigitalCommons@Fairfield Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Publications Sociology & Anthropology Department 3-1991 The ideological origins of the Population Association of America Dennis Hodgson Fairfield University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/sociologyandanthropology- facultypubs Archived with permission from the copyright holder. Copyright 1991 Wiley and Population Council. Link to the journal homepage: (http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padr) Peer Reviewed Repository Citation Hodgson, Dennis, "The ideological origins of the Population Association of America" (1991). Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Publications. 32. https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/sociologyandanthropology-facultypubs/32 Published Citation Hodgson, Dennis. "The ideological origins of the Population Association of America." Population and Development Review 17, no. 1 (March 1991): 1-34. This item has been accepted for inclusion in DigitalCommons@Fairfield by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Fairfield. It is brought to you by DigitalCommons@Fairfield with permission from the rights- holder(s) and is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Ideological Origins of the Population Association of America DENNIS HODGSON THE FIELD OF POPULATION in the United States early in this century was quite diffuse. There were no academic programs producing certified demographers, no body of theory and methods that all agreed constituted the field, no consensus on which population problems posed the most serious threat to the nation or human welfare more generally.
    [Show full text]
  • The Reproductive Futurism of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland
    “You See, Children Were the – the Raison D’être”: The Reproductive Futurism of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland Lynne Evans Abstract: This article argues that Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s influ- ential 1915 utopia, ratifies and works to renew the ideologies of a white, racist, male-dominated heteronormativity through the body of the child. Through its obsession with the child, Herland enacts the “reproductive futurism” that queer theorist Lee Edelman recognizes as the heavily guard- ed, central constituting principle of heteronormative culture. Gilman’s text does not provide a new vision for America; rather, Herland enacts a renewal of the same constitutive fears that heteronormative culture seeks to displace onto the body of the child. Gilman’s text is, thereby, deeply implicated in the very patriarchal subjugation the author wishes to subvert and in the larger reproduction of a racist and heterosexist hegemony. Keywords: Gilman, Edelman, Herland, Utopia, mothering Résumé : Le présent article postule que Herland,l’utopie d’influence de 1915 de Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ratifie et travaille à renouveler par le corps de l’enfant les idéologies d’une hétéronormativité. Par son obsession de l’en- fant, Herland met en scène le « futurisme reproducteur » que le théoricien queer Lee Edelman reconnaît comme le principe constituant central forte- ment protégé de la culture hétéronormative. Le texte de Gilman n’offre pas une vision nouvelle à l’Amérique. Herland renouvelle plutôt les mêmes phobies constitutives que la culture hétéronormative cherche à déplacer sur le corps de l’enfant. Le texte de Gilman est donc profondément intégré à la subjugation très patriarcale que l’auteur souhaite bouleverser et à la repro- duction plus vaste d’une hégémonie raciste et hétérosexiste.
    [Show full text]
  • Individuality and Utopian Desire in Post-Darwinian Literature
    Island Studies Journal, 12(2), 2017, pp. 267-280 Dreaming of islands: individuality and utopian desire in post-Darwinian literature Niall Sreenan University College London, United Kingdom [email protected] ABSTRACT: This paper conducts an exploration of the post-Darwinian literary and philosophical imaginary through the topos of the island. Drawing upon philosophical reflections by Gilles Deleuze on the nature of material islands and their psychic function as fantasies of transcendence, I argue that the island takes on new significance in a post-Darwinian world by offering an image of human independence that is unavailable under the regime of biological evolution. By conducting comparative readings of Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island, Aldous Huxley’s Island, Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, and H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau, instigated by the critical apparatus developed with my reading of Deleuze, I establish the existence of a genealogy of post-Darwinian narratives in which the island facilitates a specifically utopian dream of individual autonomy, which is bound up with the ideology of capitalism. Taken together, I argue, these works emphasise the importance and complex position of the island in the post-Darwinian imaginary. In these works, islands neither allow for simplistic affirmations of such utopian, capitalist fantasies of human sovereignty nor deterministic pessimism, but explore critically these ideas as they co-exist in tension. Keywords: Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, desert islands, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Houellebecq, Samuel Butler, Utopia https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.34 © 2017 ― Institute of Island Studies, University of Prince Edward Island, Canada.
    [Show full text]
  • The Sociopolitical Impact of Eugenics in America
    Voces Novae Volume 11 Article 3 2019 Engineering Mankind: The oS ciopolitical Impact of Eugenics in America Megan Lee [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/vocesnovae Part of the American Politics Commons, Bioethics and Medical Ethics Commons, Genetics and Genomics Commons, and the History Commons Recommended Citation Lee, Megan (2019) "Engineering Mankind: The ocS iopolitical Impact of Eugenics in America," Voces Novae: Vol. 11, Article 3. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Chapman University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Voces Novae by an authorized editor of Chapman University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Lee: Engineering Mankind: The Sociopolitical Impact of Eugenics in America Engineering Mankind: The Sociopolitical Impact of Eugenics in America Megan Lee “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”1 This statement was made by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. while presenting the court’s majority opinion on the sterilization of a seventeen-year old girl in 1927. The concept of forced sterilization emerged during the American Eugenics Movement of the early 20th century. In 1909, California became one of the first states to introduce eugenic laws which legalized the forced sterilization of those deemed “feeble-minded.” The victims were mentally ill patients in psychiatric state hospitals, individuals who suffered from epilepsy and autism, and prisoners with criminal convictions, all of whom were forcibly castrated.
    [Show full text]
  • Eugenics, Pt. 2
    Eugenics, Pt. 2 8.31 Lecture - LPS 60 Review: Eugenicists claim to be supported by which two scientific theories? Scientific theory Application by Eugenicists Natural Selection -----------> Darwinian Morality (“Might makes right”) Hard Heredity ------------> Genetically-determined Social fitness Review: Eugenicists claim to be supported by which two scientific theories? Scientific theory Application by Eugenicists Natural Selection -----------> Darwinian Morality (“Might makes right”) Hard Heredity ------------> Genetically-determined Social fitness 1. Darwinian Morality “One of the effects of civilization is to diminish the rigour of the application of the law of natural selection. It preserves weakly lives that would have perished in barbarous lands.” “The question was then forced upon me: Could not the race of men be similarly improved? Could not the undesirables be got rid of and the desirables multiplied?” - Francis Galton, "Hereditary Talent and Character" in MacMillan's Magazine Vol. XII (May - October 1865). London Poster, 1910s 2. Genetically-determined social fitness The following groups are deemed socially ‘unfit’: epileptics, depressed, poor (paupers), criminals, alcoholics, blind, deformed, deaf, feeble-minded Galton (1869) focuses on intelligence. Laughlin (1922) includes all of these groups and more under the label “socially inadequate”. London Poster, 1910s “Eugenics...is capable of becoming the most sacred ideal of the human race, as a race; one of the supreme religious duties… Once the full implications of evolutionary biology are grasped, eugenics will inevitably become part of the religion of the future” - Julian Huxley, Eugenics Review (28:1), 1936 Huxley was a biology professor at King’s College London & the Royal Institution as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London; he’s said to be the founder of the “modern evolutionary synthesis”.
    [Show full text]
  • Single-Gendered Worlds in Science Fiction: Better for Whom? Victor Grech with Clare Thake-Vasallo and Ivan Callus
    VECTOR 269 – SPRING 2012 Single-gendered Worlds in Science Fiction: Better for Whom? Victor Grech with Clare Thake-Vasallo and Ivan Callus n excess of one gender is a regular and worlds are commoner than men-only worlds is that a problematic trope in SF, instantly removing any number of writers have speculated whether a world Apotential tension between the two sexes while constructed on strict feminist principles might be utopian simultaneously generating new concerns. While female- rather than dystopian, and ‘for many of these writers, only societies are common, male-only societies are rarer. such a world was imaginable only in terms of sexual This is partly a true biological obstacle because the female separatism; for others, it involved reinventing female and body is capable of bringing a baby forth into the world male identities and interactions’.2 after fertilization, or even without fertilization, so that a These issues have been ably reviewed in Brian prospective author’s only stumbling block to accounting Attebery’s Decoding Gender in Science Fiction (2002), in for the society’s potential longevity. For example, which he observes that ‘it’s impossible in real life to to gynogenesis is a particular type of parthenogenesis isolate the sexes thoroughly enough to demonstrate […] whereby animals that reproduce by this method can absolutes of feminine or masculine behavior’,3 whereas only reproduce that way. These species, such as the ‘within science-fiction, separation by gender has been the salamanders of genus Ambystoma, consist solely of basis of a fascinating series of thought experiments’.4 females which does, occasionally, have sexual contact Intriguingly, Attebery poses the question that a single- with males of a closely related species but the sperm gendered society is ‘better for whom’?5 from these males is not used to fertilise ova.
    [Show full text]
  • Female Perspectives in the Dystopian Novel
    Ghent University Faculty of Arts and Philosophy FEMALE PERSPECTIVES IN THE DYSTOPIAN NOVEL Supervisor: Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the Prof. Dr. Marysa Demoor requirements for the degree of 'Master in de Taal- en Letterkunde: Engels-Spaans' by Fran Desmet 2010 Desmet 2 CONTENTS Acknowledgements __________________________________________________________3 Introduction _______________________________________________________________4 1. Utopia, dystopia's ancestor__________________________________________________7 1.1 The utopian project__________________________________________________________ 7 1.2 Utopia and the use of language_________________________________________________ 9 2. Dystopia, a future nightmare _______________________________________________11 2.1 From utopia to dystopia _____________________________________________________ 11 2.2. The rise of the dystopian novel _______________________________________________ 13 2.2.1 Historical and political context _____________________________________________________ 13 2.2.1.1 Science and technology_______________________________________________________ 13 2.2.1.2. The influence of Nietzsche's and Freud's theories __________________________________ 15 2.2.2 Famous dystopias _______________________________________________________________ 19 2.2.2.1 We , Yevgeny Zamyatin (1924) _________________________________________________ 19 2.2.2.2 Brave New World , Aldous Huxley (1932) ________________________________________ 23 2.2.2.3 Nineteen Eighty-Four , George Orwell (1949)______________________________________
    [Show full text]
  • Life Itself’: a Socio-Historic Examination of FINRRAGE
    CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by White Rose E-theses Online From ‘Death of the Female’ to ‘Life Itself’: A Socio-Historic Examination of FINRRAGE Stevienna Marie de Saille Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Leeds School of Sociology and Social Policy September 2012 ii The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2012, The University of Leeds and Stevienna Marie de Saille The right of Stevienna Marie de Saille to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are a number of people who made this thesis possible in a number of different, fantastically important ways. My deepest thanks to: - My supervisors, Prof. Anne Kerr and Dr. Paul Bagguley, for their patience, advice, editorial comments, and the occasional kickstart when the project seemed just a little(!) overwhelming, and my examiners, Prof. Maureen McNeil and Dr. Angharad Beckett for their insight and suggestions. - The School of Sociology and Social Policy, for awarding me the teaching bursary which made this possible, and all the wonderful faculty and support staff who made it an excellent experience. - The archivists in Special Collections at the University of Leeds, and to the volunteers at the Feminist Archive North for giving me an all-access pass.
    [Show full text]