Rhetorical Theory and Criticism: Rhetorical Theory – Sordid Genealogies: from Big Data to Gaia

Sordid Genealogies: from Big Data to Gaia examines the ways in which the discredited “discipline” of eugenics has lived on (implicitly and explicitly) in the practices and ideas that have informed the ways we understand and investigate minds, bodies, nature and culture. We will read in a variety of disciplines and across a range of histories, focusing on: 1. the history of psychometrics, Scientific Racism and Big Data; 2. the idea of degeneration and an exploration of its possible “cures”; 3. the entanglement of eugenics with the history of conservation and environmentalism; 4. finally, the examination of how culture, as a subject of study, emerged hand in hand with eugenic notions of race, degeneration and “improvement.”