Document Type
Review Essay
Abstract
[First paragraph]
Nancy Ordover's American Eugenics is a very personal book, not so much in terms of its content, but because of the convictions and a deep-felt sense of injustice that have inspired it. And while the author is straightforward in acknowledging her personal motivations, this is not to suggest that American Eugenics ever lapses into personal anecdote or polemic; far from it, the book is a serious and tightly argued attempt to grasp, in Ordover's words "the resiliency of this often discredited but never dormant philosophy" (xvi). In order to do this, Ordover goes on to argue in her introduction as well as throughout the book, is to understand the consolidation of race, gender, class, sexuality, and nation not only as critical categories but as weapons used by the pseudo-science of eugenics. Ordover is thus looking for both the inclusive and exclusive strategies employed by eugenics throughout its history - some of which were successfully marketed as "progressive" or "liberal" - such as IQ tests, the right to abortion, and immigration restriction.
Repository Citation
Rheindorf, Markus. "On Nancy Ordover's American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 3, no. 4, 2003, pp. 1–3. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol3/iss4/11