Reproduction, Race, and Gender in Philosophy and the Early Life Sciences (Suny Series, Philosophy and Race)

SummaryInvestigates the impact of theories of reproduction and heredity on the emerging concepts of race and gender at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries.Focusing on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this volume highlights the scientific and philosophical inquiry into heredity and reproduction and the consequences of these developing ideas on understandings of race and gender. Neither the life sciences nor philosophy had fixed disciplinary boundaries at this point in history. Kant, Hegel, and Schelling weighed in on these questions alongside scientists such as Caspar Friedrich Wolff, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and Karl Ernst von Baer. The essays in this volume chart the development of modern gender polarizations and a naturalized, scientific understanding of gender and race that absorbed and legitimized cultural assumptions about difference and hierarchy.Susanne Lettow teaches philosophy at the University of Paderborn, Germany. Contents 6 Introduction 8 Notes 21 PART I. REPRODUCTION AND THE EARLY LIFE SCIENCES 26 1. Generation, Genealogy, and Time: The Concept of Reproduction from Histoire naturelle to Naturphilosophie 28 Generation, Production, Reproduction: Historical-Semantic Shifts 31 Reproduction As Multiplication: La Mettrie, Maupertuis, and Buffon 33 Reproduction As Repetition: Blumenbach, Herder, and Kielmeyer 36 Reproduction As Return: Schelling, Görres, Hegel 39 Conclusion 43 Notes 45 2. Organic Molecules, Parasites, Urthiere: The Controversial Nature of Spermatic Animals, 1749–1841 52 Thinking the Organic World As a Unity: Buffon and Blumenbach 53 Ordering the World Through Gender Hierarchy: Oken 58 Combining Antagonistic Visions of the Organic World 62 Notes 64 3. The Scientific Construction of Gender and Generation in the German Late Enlightenment and in German Romantic Naturphilosophie 72 Ambiguity and Interaction: Wilhelm Von Humboldt 75 Pure Masculinity, Separation, and Polarization: Lorenz Oken 79 The “Female As Such”: Carl Gustav Carus 84 Notes 88 4. Zeugung/Fortpflanzung: Distinctions of Medium in the Discourse on Generation around 1800 90 Fortpflanzung: Modes of Continuity in Goethe, Herder, and Fichte 92 Fortpflanzung’s Propagation: Johann Wilhem Ritter on Acoustics and Chemistry 96 Ritter’s Acoustics 98 Ritter’S Chemistry 100 Virtualizing Propagation: Karl Ernst von Baer 102 Conclusion 104 Notes 105 5. Treviranus’ Biology: Generation, Degeneration, and the Boundaries of Life 112 A Science of Living Nature: Biology and the Boundaries of Life 114 Biology As the History of Physical Life: Generation and Degeneration 121 Conclusion 128 Notes 130 PART II. ARTICULATIONS OF RACE AND GENDER 136 6. Skin Color and the Origin of Physical Anthropology (1640–1850) 138 “Why are the Ethiopians Black?” Skin Color As a Research Object 143 Explanations of Blackness 147 Skin Color, Classification, and Difference 149 Skin Color, Slavery, and the Notion of Race 152 On the Construction of a European Somatic Identity 156 Notes 159 7. The Caucasian Slave Race: Beautiful Circassians and the Hybrid Origin of European Identity 170 “The Handsomest Women of the World”: Beauty and Desire 172 Erotic Commodities of Trade: The Circulation of Circassian Women 176 Crossbreedings: Improving Blood and Beauty 178 Inventing the Caucasians 180 Proto-Eugenics, Exotic Desire, and White Women 186 Notes 189 8. Analogy of Analogy: Animals and Slaves in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Defense of Women’s Rights 194 Environment and Analogy: Samuel Stanhope Smith and Catherine Macaulay 195 Olaudah Equiano: Slavery and Animal Analogies 199 Wollstonecraft and the Animal Analogy 201 Clustering Analogies: Animals, Slaves, Women 205 Analogies As Analogies of Analogies 209 Notes 212 9. Reproducing Difference: Race and Heredity from a longue durée Perspective 224 Heredity and Disease 226 Heredity and Human Variety 230 Heredity and the Struggle For Life 233 Conclusion 237 Notes 238 10. Heredity and Hybridity in the Natural History of Kant, Girtanner, and Schelling during the 1790s 244 The Role of the Keime in Kant’s Theory of Race 244 Blumenbach’s Rejection of the Keime in his Essay on the Bildungstrieb 248 Kant’s Endorsement of Girtanner’s Contribution 252 Schelling’s Testimony 254 Kant’s Legacy 256 Notes 258 11. Sexual Polarity in Schelling and Hegel 266 Schelling’s Polarization: Production and Inhibition 267 Male Production—Female Inhibition 269 Hegel’s Polarization: Concept and Matter 273 The Sexualization of Concept and Matter 276 Sexual and Racial Difference 279 Sexual Difference and the Philosophy of Nature 281 Notes 284 About the Contributors 290 Index 294 Investigates the impact of theories of reproduction and heredity on the emerging concepts of race and gender at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Focusing on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this volume highlights the scientific and philosophical inquiry into heredity and reproduction and the consequences of these developing ideas on understandings of race and gender. Neither the life sciences nor philosophy had fixed disciplinary boundaries at this point in history. Kant, Hegel, and Schelling weighed in on these questions alongside scientists such as Caspar Friedrich Wolff, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and Karl Ernst von Baer. The essays in this volume chart the development of modern gender polarizations and a naturalized, scientific understanding of gender and race that absorbed and legitimized cultural assumptions about difference and hierarchy. Susanne Lettow teaches philosophy at the University of Paderborn, Germany.