{"id":26167,"date":"2012-10-24T01:44:12","date_gmt":"2012-10-24T01:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=26167"},"modified":"2012-10-24T01:44:12","modified_gmt":"2012-10-24T01:44:12","slug":"ocular-anthropomorphisms-eugenics-and-primatology-at-the-threshold-of-the-%e2%80%9calmost-human%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=26167","title":{"rendered":"Ocular Anthropomorphisms: Eugenics and Primatology at the Threshold of the \u201cAlmost Human\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1215\/01642472-1597350\" target=\"_blank\">Ocular Anthropomorphisms: Eugenics and Primatology at the Threshold of the \u201cAlmost Human\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/socialtext.dukejournals.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Social Text<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/socialtext.dukejournals.org\/content\/30\/3_112.toc\" target=\"_blank\">Volume 30, Number 3 112<\/a><br \/>\npages 97-121<br \/>\nDOI: <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1215\/01642472-1597350\" target=\"_blank\">10.1215\/01642472-1597350<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"mailto:glickm@dickinson.edu\" target=\"_blank\">Megan H. Glick<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of Women&#8217;s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies<br \/>\n<em>Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From the moment <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charles_Darwin\" target=\"_blank\">Charles Darwin<\/a> proposed Africa as the site of human origins, scientists and the lay public alike labored to reconcile contemporary racial hierarchies with the possibility of a universal African birthplace. Previous historical treatments of this phenomenon have focused on the search for the \u201cmissing link\u201d in Asia and Europe, an investigation that, if successful, would have effectively established a separate ancestry for the white races. This essay identifies a new component of this history: the racialization of higher-order primates within the nascent discipline of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Primatology\" target=\"_blank\">primatology<\/a> and within US popular culture between the 1910s and 1930s. <strong>Departing from <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Donna_Haraway\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Donna Haraway\u2019s<\/strong><\/a><strong> originary work on the field, this essay argues that primatology was in fact built upon preexisting scientific racial ideologies, such that the animals themselves became parsed according to racial categorizations. In particular, the <\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anthropomorphism\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>anthropomorphization<\/strong><\/a><strong> and \u201cwhitening\u201d of the chimpanzee on the one hand, and the bestialization and \u201cblackening\u201d of the gorilla on the other, provided a forum for ideas about biological essentialism, evolutionary capabilities, and racial difference.<\/strong> This alternative history is revealed through an examination of the photographic archives and written work of longtime <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Eugenics\" target=\"_blank\">eugenicist<\/a> and founding primatologist <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Robert_Yerkes\" target=\"_blank\">Robert Mearns Yerkes<\/a>, and through a contextualization of these documents within contemporary scientific and popular cultures. By tracing the lineage of American primatology to the closing arc of eugenic science, this essay seeks to enrich and reimagine the relationship between practices of racialization and speciation within the larger histories of evolutionary thought and racial formation.<\/p>\n<p>Read or purchase the article <a href=\"http:\/\/socialtext.dukejournals.org\/content\/30\/3_112\/97.full.pdf+html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ocular Anthropomorphisms: Eugenics and Primatology at the Threshold of the \u201cAlmost Human\u201d Social Text Volume 30, Number 3 112 pages 97-121 DOI: 10.1215\/01642472-1597350 Megan H. Glick, Assistant Professor of Women&#8217;s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania From the moment Charles Darwin proposed Africa as the site of human origins, scientists and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2039,459,13,6941,394,20],"tags":[12582,12581,12580],"class_list":["post-26167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-history","category-liveevents","category-philosophy","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-megan-glick","tag-megan-h-glick","tag-social-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}