There are tons of things I want to cover, but I suspect most will come up in the classroom discussion and a few will return later in the semester. In this post, I want to point our attention to a few of the author’s choices, and see what the class thinks of them. The first comes when Catte writes, “I think most eugenicists were bad people. There will be no ‘man of his time’ hedging here.” (21-2). What do we think of this decision? Is it fair, and what does that even mean? Does it need to be “fair”? I didn’t think she went out of her way to attack these figures, and her work putting their ideas into conversation with their contemporaries makes it clear they weren’t unique in their thinking. So, was her approach appropriate, and just as importantly, was it effective? Maybe we should understand the past on its own terms, but feel free to judge it on ours? Second, because it’s often polarizing (and I know some online reviews seize on this to dismiss the book), I want to note she raises the example of Donald Trump using eugenic language in talking about genes and breeding (30) and commenting on immigration and “shithole countries” (32). I think we can comfortably assume she isn’t a huge fan, but she also is smart enough to know how some readers will respond. I didn’t read that as an attack (she certainly didn’t dwell on it), though I know some people will, so what is her purpose here? Why did she decide to make this point, and why was Trump a useful example to raise? Would another example have had the same effect? Third, what do we think of her decision to end the book with all of these numbers, figures? In a book driven by individual stories and narratives that counter some of the rationalizations presented as modern calculation and science, why does she return to numbers and value calculations as a way to conclude?
