Presenters
Abstract
Although several scholars have brought attention to the utopian impulses underlying eugenics programs, few have explored the arguments authors use to illustrate the dangers of these programs. Building on the work of Michael Burleigh and Peter Augustine Lawler on the subject of eugenics, I argue in this paper that the twentieth-century rejection of utopias depends upon a system of social values in which perfection is considered unnatural or inhuman. In both Brave New World and The Handmaid’s Tale, the procreative promise of eugenics collapses—from the perspective of the novels’ protagonists—into dystopia because it denies some innate element of human nature as defined by the authors of the texts. In order to make this argument, I first outline the ways in which early literary utopias incorporate eugenics programs in order to portray a perfect, if admittedly unrealistic, society. Then, by analyzing numerous modern utopian texts, I show that the drive to establish scientific control of human evolution depends upon the establishment of a genetic ideal, which cannot be admitted to be historically or socially contingent. Finally, I argue that modern literary utopias allow marginalized members of society to question reductive models of an ideal citizen.