Presentation short abstract

Biodiversity conservation has been central to transformations in Eugenics, the pseudo-science of the ‘improvement’ of life, from the 19th century to the present. This paper explores these historical and contemporary transformations to argue that eugenics is becoming a form of conservation itself.

Presentation long abstract

Eugenics, the pseudo-science of the ‘improvement’ of life, has itself gone through multiple transformations across its enduring lifespan. Recent literature emphasizes how eugenics is far from a pre-WWII phenomenon: it not only survived the war in ‘progressive’ forms but is more recently making a major comeback through new forms of science, technology and neo-illiberal movements and administrations. What is less well known is how biodiversity conservation has been central to these transformations. In this paper, we explore the historical and contemporary connections between biodiversity conservation and the transformations of eugenics from the 19th century to the present. We highlight the “fundamental redefinition of eugenics as concerned not with race but with biological qualities” (Weindling, 2012: 482-483) after WWII and how this redefinition now again plays a critical role in the shift from neoliberal to ‘neo-illiberal’ techno-driven conservation. We argue that this more recent shift moves eugenics from a concern with neoliberal ‘improvement’ of certain forms of life, led primarily by members of the professional-managerial class, to a focus on the decidedly neo-illiberal ‘sustaining’ of certain forms life in the face of increasing disasters and threats of mass extinction. We conclude that eugenics should no longer be primarily understood as a form of illiberal, racist development, but rather as a form of neo-illiberal, biological ‘maintenance’. Or in short: eugenics is itself becoming a form of conservation.