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Project: Charting a history of eugenics, pre-/ and post-/ Galton
About the project
Critically looking at Eugenics as a 鈥榙esign project鈥� / Exploring how the eugenics logic pervades today.
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Through identifying and zero-ing in on objects in the collection and the discrete events in the history of eugenics implied by them, I will with a written/visual/graphic approach draw a short and incomplete history of eugenics, especially as it pertains to Design in the broadest sense.
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Galton used the lustre of the objects he designed for his experiments to do a great deal of the heavy lifting necessary to contrive 鈥楨ugenics鈥� as a legitimate and neutral field of research -see the 鈥楥reepy Gloves鈥� and how they overcomplicate a simple (and horrid) task, which is evidently unscientific in method (ranking the relative geographical 鈥榓ttractiveness鈥� of women), to an absurd extent. I鈥檓 interested in the role design played in the proliferation of the Eugenics logic; the first dogwhistle, the first IUD contraceptive were all created by and for eugenic reasons. Design in a larger sense is crucial to understanding Eugenics, as a failed and 鈥榤isguided鈥� Utopian design project born out of a white supremacist and ableist logic.
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Such as it is, a simplistic history of Eugenics isn鈥檛 sufficient on its own. There is an opportunity here, or, really an obligation to push it into a much more interesting space, which is more relevant to how the Eugenics logic exists, and pervades today.
