Embodied Difference: Divergent Bodies in Public Discourse 1498563864, 9781498563864, 9781498563871

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Embodied Difference

Embodied Difference Divergent Bodies in Public Discourse

Edited by Jamie A. Thomas and Christina Jackson

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2019 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-4985-6386-4 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4985-6387-1 (electronic) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction: Approaching the Body through Public-facing Scholarship in Philadelphia

1

UNIT ONE: THE RATIONAL MIND VS. THE CRIMINAL BODY Preface to Unit One

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 1 Our Own Flesh and Blood: Putting the Body at the Center of Violence and Dehumanization Krista K. Thomason

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 2 Are We Our Brains? How Early Christianity Shaped Western Ideas About Power, Morality, and Personhood Jessica Wright

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 3 Making the Case for Transfeminism: The Activist Philosophies of CeCe McDonald and Angela Davis Ute Bettray

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UNIT TWO:  THE DEVIANT AND UNDESIRABLE BODY Preface to Unit Two

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 4 Bias, Brains, and Skulls: Tracing the Legacy of Scientific Racism in the Nineteenth-Century Works of Samuel George Morton and Friedrich Tiedemann Paul Wolff Mitchell and John S. Michael v

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Contents

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 5 Female Vampires as Embodied Critiques of Heteronormativity, Blood-Mixing, and Patriarchy: From Carmilla to Fledgling Dorisa Costello

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 6 Protest Bodies: The Right to Protect Your Own in Environmental Justice and Redevelopment Battles Christina Jackson

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 7 Death and the Power of the Young Female Body: Iconic Legal Cases Barry R. Furrow

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UNIT THREE:  THE BEAUTIFUL BODY AND ITS PARTS Preface to Unit Three  8 Medicine’s Cultural Power: The Textbook Case of Gray’s Anatomy Emily August  9 “Tuck in Your Derrière”: Butts and Bodies in Ballet and Tap Kat Richter 10 The Year Is 2093: Reanimation from Frankenstein to Prometheus as Sci-fi Metaphor for (Dis)Embodied Female Futures and Colonization of Space Jamie A. Thomas

165 167 183

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Index

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About the Contributors

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Acknowledgments

As co-editors, we reserve the greatest gratitude for all of our contributors, whose individual creativity as researchers, passion for cross-disciplinary thinking, and attention to our vision for this project has been indispensable. Thank you to Sarah and Courtney, our editors at Lexington Books, for their enthusiastic response to our early ideas, and for answering all of our questions. Our additional thanks to multiple anonymous reviewers at Lexington whose input has helped to strengthen this book all throughout. Long before this book was even fully conceptualized, our gatherings of like-minded scholars received support from students and colleagues in the Department of Linguistics at Swarthmore College, as well as the Penn Museum and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Thank you for your support. We also express appreciation for our many mentors over the years, as well as our families, our friends in Philadelphia, and those special others who have believed in us when we have needed it most. This book is dedicated to all of you.

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Introduction Approaching the Body through Public-facing Scholarship in Philadelphia

TWO INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISTS IN WEST PHILADELPHIA As co-editors of Embodied Difference: Divergent Bodies in Public Discourse we come together as two women who teach at U.S. institutions of higher education in Greater Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Swarthmore College), and Atlantic City, New Jersey (Stockton University).1 Each of us engages intersectionality and antiracism through our teaching and research, meaning that we take note of what legal scholar and theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw observes as a “multidimensionality” in our lives as women of color.2 Following Crenshaw and others, we seek to understand how multiple forms of oppression and discrimination, including, but not limited to racism and sexism, coordinate within configurations that shape our personal realities and structure our perceptions of justice and equality.3 To do this, we deliberate concerns of privilege and power, asking questions about how policies and practices regulating our everyday lives impact the ways our bodies—our skin colors, voices, genders, and sexualities—are perceived. This book is driven by these questions, and derives from our collaborations across and beyond our institutions to explore with others the causes and consequences of social inequality. Those collaborations and conversations paved the way for this book, and together, as a sociocultural linguist (Jamie A. Thomas) and urban sociologist (Christina Jackson), we envision Embodied Difference as a teaching project; one that has helped us unlock compelling intersections in our fields of expertise, and one that can be shared with our students, communities, and colleagues to stimulate further routes of cross-disciplinary insight.

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Introduction

Though we were already friends, having previously met through the postdoctoral fellowship of the Consortium for Faculty Diversity, coordinating and editing Embodied Difference has helped us grow in knowledge of our professional strengths and ongoing experiences as scholar-teachers living in West Philadelphia. In completing this project, we have regularly met in coffee shops, parks, and co-working spaces local to the neighborhood community and section of Philadelphia that we both affectionately call “West Philly.” By intentionally placing ourselves among the public environs of our neighborhood, and participating in locally-led initiatives such as Camp Sojourner and its annual Sojourner Truth Walk for girls’ empowerment (in honor of feminist abolitionist Sojourner Truth),4 we participate as allies with folks identifying as women, womyn, femmes, trans, men, and queer, who lead through love, hope, and coalition-building. Opportunities like these to collaborate with our neighbors educate us on the expansive possibilities of intersectional feminist politics, temper our fears of the unknown, and remind us of how fitting it is that our project should come together in the city of Philadelphia. Sitting in our favorite coffee shops and meeting spots like Green Line, Milk n’ Honey, The Gold Standard, or Franny Lou’s Porch, with laptops open and printed essay drafts ready for review, our conversations have necessarily reflected on how the particular history of our city has significant bearing on our lives as African American women. After all, Philadelphia is the place where the U.S. Declaration of Independence was authored (1776), and the Constitution thereafter (1787). Those early documents, drafted and ratified by an empowered few, outlined the context of struggle for many of our forbearers; women who were barred from reading, writing, and even speaking—all of the activities that are today at the heart of our practice as professors and educators. Famously, freedom fighter Harriet Tubman was one of these women, and used her known status as an illiterate person to her advantage, evading capture while pretending to read a newspaper. Ms. Tubman (c. 1822–1913) made her first escape from enslavement by reaching Philadelphia in 1849 with help from collaborators in the Underground Railroad. However, after the Fugitive Slave Act became law in 1850, and made Philadelphia no longer safe, she guided escapees further north toward New York and Ontario (Canada). Later in life, she became a champion of women’s suffrage, always believing that her role was to organize, collaborate, and resist. Her struggle was made even more challenging by the whippings and other abuse she endured while enslaved, which left her with a severe head wound and recurring episodes of pain and dizzying spells that would sometimes leave her unconscious without warning. Hers is a story that cautions us to remember a time of regular, urgent peril of a different kind in our city. Then, segregation and the spectre of racial slavery reigned as overt



Introduction 3

regimes of control, each designed to mark bodies bearing resemblance to Ms. Tubman’s as un-women (to borrow the term from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale) and un-citizens. At these same intersections of race, sex, class, and (dis)ability is where bodies today remain categorized and judged for their (perceived) differences. Today, some 170 years after Ms. Tubman’s brave journey to Philadelphia, the city’s architectural landscape, public monuments, numerous churches, racially integrated trolleys and buses, social movements, and visible signs of urban redevelopment and gentrification are a testament to the enduring legacies of radical insurgents like her, as well as to the structural inequality that nevertheless endures.5 Where the Declaration of Independence was signed all those years before at Independence Hall, that very location is now adjacent to the permanent resting place of the Liberty Bell in a section of Philadelphia popularly known as “Old City.” There, on the corner of Market and Sixth Streets, are two installations memorializing Africans enslaved at-large by way of the Transatlantic (Human) Trade, and specifically by George Washington at his Philadelphia home on that site. As outdoor public monuments managed by the National Park Service, these installations are accessible day and night. One traces the physical, architectural outlines of where Washington’s enslaved were made to live on the property, and features video reenactments of these people, including Ona Judge (c. 1773–1848), a woman who managed to escape. The other monument incorporates words, quotations, and symbols from the cultures of present-day Ghana to pay homage to the many people who have perished in Philadelphia, believing in freedom as their human right. As part of this monument, the Adinkra symbol of sankofa advises visitors, “Go back to the past, to build the future,” while nkyinkyin declares, “One must change to survive.” The monument also includes the words of Frederick Douglass (c. 1818–1895), excerpted from a speech he gave in Philadelphia in 1862: We have sought to bind the chains of slavery on the limbs of the Black man, without thinking that at last we should find the other end of that hateful chain about our own necks.

All those years ago, Mr. Douglass, himself an escapee, cut to the heart of the matter in his assessment of how the imposition of slavery covertly seduces with its power, and succeeds in blinding all to their own enslavement by proxy. In co-editing Embodied Difference, we take up Mr. Douglass’s intuition by also turning our lens toward the unseen, hoping that our attention to understudied sites of oppression in our present day will prove a fruitful contribution to the broader goal of our collective liberation.

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Introduction

Away from the Liberty Bell and George Washington’s historic home, a walk to the west for a distance of eight city blocks will land visitors at City Hall, the world’s largest municipal building, and yet another monument to Philadelphia’s past. Topping the edifice is a triumphant likeness of William Penn, who founded the city in 1682 after his father was granted lands encompassing present-day Delaware and Pennsylvania by King Charles II. Then, the area was already being occupied by Dutch, Swedish, German, and British settlers, today memorialized through assorted plaques adorning City Hall’s exterior. Inside, however, a portion of the building’s inner causeway is structurally supported by four peculiar columns. These are granite columns that adjoin the ceiling by way of the outstretched arms of women and men whose naked torsos are sculpted in support of the building’s weight. Though the women are turned partially inward in an apparent shielding of their breasts, their faces and hair textures, musculature, and headdress and headwraps, along with that of their male counterparts, reveal an intentional depiction of Africans, Indigenous peoples, Asians, and Europeans on each separate column. Where this visual symbolism imparts emphasis on the biological traits and cultural styling that regularly distinguish people into divergent groups, it also misleadingly communicates that these groups equally and separately bear the weight and responsibility of Philadelphia’s trajectory. Instead, it is more accurate to regard the city as an unequal mosaic of blended co-racial and co-cultural political alliances, of treaties signed and abandoned, promises kept and broken, and futures yet to be charted. All of this occurred and continues to take place on lands never fully ceded by the Lenape, an Indigenous people alternatively referred to as the Delaware Nation, who were forcibly removed first to Kansas, and Oklahoma afterward, by the U.S. government in the 1860s, and are survivors of genocide and displacement exacted by European colonizers. Sadly, the Susquehanna (Conestoga), and other Indigenous peoples who at times lived in and around the Philadelphia area, were massacred to the point of invisibility, or absorbed by other Indigenous groups elsewhere. Asian American contributions to Philadelphia’s history and culture were pointedly impacted by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, signed into law by U.S. President Chester Arthur, which made it illegal for Chinese immigrants to enter the country or become citizens. The Exclusion Act rode a tide of White resentment buoyed by the disappointments of the Gold Rush, the economic downturn of the 1870s, and burgeoning academic theories of selective non-White racial inferiority, including those circulated via Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species. Though the Exclusion Act was eventually countered by legislation in 1943, the racist slogans looming large in those days have resurfaced in stereotypes of the lat-



Introduction 5

est recent arrivals to twenty-first-century America, among them speakers of Spanish, Haitian Creole, and Arabic. This crucial history notwithstanding, Embodied Difference also draws inspiration from Philadelphia’s profile as a site of important advances in the fields of both sociology and linguistics. Chief among these is W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1899 sociological analysis of urban inequality, published as The Philadelphia Negro. The pathbreaking case study established modern sociology by assembling the first systematic, coordinated examination of the health, education, occupations, and social lives of African Americans.6 Linguistics also received a significant boost in the 1970s ethnographic research of Marjorie Goodwin, who brought attention to the grammar, vocabulary, and speech style of West Philadelphia children in early studies supporting William Labov’s affirmations of African American Language as a unique variety of English.7 In decades since, cross-pollination in the techniques, approaches, and theories of linguistics, sociology, and anthropology has transformed the way that we understand people in relation to their practices, concerns, and popular beliefs. Dell Hymes (1927–2009) was also especially influential in advocating for interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary studies of society. As a sociolinguist, Dr. Hymes pointed out that forward-thinking interventions require a visioning process that understands freedom as located in the notion of voice, where, “One way to think of the society in which one would like to live is to think of the kinds of voices it would have.”8 In assembling a wealth of voices through Embodied Difference, we as co-editors have taken up Hymes’s challenge, in coordinating a body of research that embraces multiple styles of writing and approaches to description and analysis, in affirmation of the freedom, multiplicity, and resistance that Philadelphia has hosted over the years. PHILADELPHIA DISCUSSIONS: MORALITY, RACE, AND THE BODY Though we write from Philadelphia, bodies are the overall theme of this book. We endeavor to understand how our bodies, as we move through the world, gather praise and rejection with regard to the differences between us. Comprised of cells, blood, hearts, brains, skulls, and additional architecture, the intricate insides of our bodies are less visible to us on a daily basis. Therefore, it is often our faces, butts, skin colors, and other more visible attributes that are regularly scrutinized for markers of difference. Filtered through expectations of gender, beauty, intelligence, class, age, and (dis)ability, visible

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Introduction

markers of difference, as captured within the body’s biology, behavior, and appearance, can be regarded as embodied. It is among these very intersections and overlaps of biology and society, conformity and resistance, history and herstory, that Embodied Difference: Divergent Bodies in Public Discourse hovers with ten chapters by anthropologists, historians, linguists, sociologists, and philosophers, in addition to humanistic scholars of biomedicine, law, literature, and performance. These original contributions have relevance for students and scholars of popular culture, human rights, sociocultural linguistics, urban sociology, physical anthropology, disability studies, bioethics, speculative fiction, genocide studies, early Christian philosophy, gender and sexuality studies, and feminisms. This book has its origins in a field trip for the freshman seminar taught by one of our co-editing duo (Thomas), on “Languages of Fear, Racism, and Zombies” in Spring 2016. Connecting with local legacies of scientific racism, the seminar course visited the Penn Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology (University of Pennsylvania) with Thomas, where they became acquainted with the Samuel G. Morton Cranial Collection. Tour guide and doctoral student Paul Wolff Mitchell walked the seminar group through the Penn Museum’s exhibit on The Making and Unmaking of Race, which featured several human skulls measured for racial type by nineteenth-century Philadelphia physician and craniologist Samuel G. Morton. Closely reviewing physical details of these 200-year-old human crania with the group, Mitchell spoke as an anthropologist, annotating his observations by dissecting overlaps in associated ideas of race, science, and racism. The resulting discussion revealed these concepts remain challenging for undergraduates. This hinted at the potential utility of a follow-up discussion, and led Thomas to organize a panel event before semester’s end, with support from the Swarthmore College Department of Linguistics. In organizing the event, Thomas reached out to Jackson, who invited additional colleagues. Consequently, the afternoon of April 28, 2016, saw anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and philosophers come together with a linguist for an unscripted discussion of how humanity is variously defined and imagined across contexts of everyday life. Entitled “Morality, Race, and the Body,” the gathering of seven diverse scholars responded to two open-ended questions: 1.  What is human? 2.  How do we define the Other? Because the event touched on so many ways of approaching bodies and embodiment, participants began by describing their disciplinary approaches.



Introduction 7

The conversation then graduated into a discussion of participants’ specific topics of research, sharing insights that examined processes of dehumanization and Othering, and challenged popular beliefs about what humans do, how humans think, and how humans live. Yvonne Chireau9 (Religious Studies, Swarthmore College) described bodies and undead imaginings as central to Haitian celebrations of renewal; Christina Jackson (Sociology, Stockton University) spoke of cities as places where bodies become vulnerable to environmental racism and plans for urban redevelopment; Paul Wolff Mitchell (Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania) discussed how race is constructed socially as well as biologically; Jamie A. Thomas (Linguistics, Swarthmore College) spoke on discourses of zombies and afterlives, contemplating the symbolism of the undead, and rationale for cryonic preservation of the body; Krista K. Thomason (Philosophy, Swarthmore College) described how people rationalize acts of murder and genocide towards other people they construct as nonhuman; Jessica Wright (Classics, Princeton University)10 brought greater context to our discussion, detailing how early Christian thought-leaders fixated on the brain and other bodily organs as predictors of moral and rational behaviors centuries before Western societies shifted to obsessions with race and sex. After the success of this first public discussion, a follow-up event and book project were planned, with the creation of a Facebook group where video footage of these events was posted along with additional materials. The second of our public discussions was billed as “Part Two,” and with Mitchell’s help, took place on September 19, 2016, at the Penn Museum with support from the University of Pennsylvania Department of Anthropology. The event featured short presentations by an expanded group of scholars, including Emily August, Laurie Greene11 (Anthropology, Stockton University), and Barry Furrow (Health Law, Drexel University). Presentations were followed by open dialogue with a diverse audience of students, professors, and local residents. That mode of dialogue strengthened our research by bringing it into contact with the concerns of a broad public, and consequently, we envision this book as a continuing of that discussion. That is to say, this cross-disciplinary project, as an effort in public-facing scholarship, aims to be accessible to a wide audience. These are readers we hope to seduce to consider topics, contexts, and research disciplines they may have never thought particularly noteworthy or eye-catching, but as a result of our efforts, can contemplate as having relevance to their own lives. That said, the ten unique chapters that make up this volume would not have been possible without the added creativity of additional researchers who have since joined our scholarly network, contributing through expertise

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Introduction

in performance (Kat Richter–Dance, Stockton University; Anthropology, Rowan University), speculative fiction (Dorisa Costello–English Literature and Linguistics, Vilnius University), transfeminism (Ute Bettray–German; Women’s and Gender Studies, Lafayette College), and demography (John S. Michael–Penn Museum). As straight and LGBTQ women and men, and as mothers, fathers, and expatriates, contributors comprise an intentionally diverse cross-section of academic ranks—our collective includes graduate students, adjunct and visiting professors, and tenure-track junior and senior professors. KEY CONCEPTS: SOCIAL NORMS, DEVIANCE, AND RACIALIZATION In centering this book project around embodiment and dehumanization, we have attempted in each chapter to acknowledge how many of our everyday ideas and popular assumptions about the world around us appear to be normal and unproblematic. We take note of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s theorizing of the concept of doxa, which: . . . implies the immediate agreement elicited by that which appears selfevident, transparently normal. Indeed doxa is a normalcy in which realization of the norm is so complete that the norm itself, as coercion, simply ceases to exist as such.12

This means that the very notion of normalcy signals we may be unaware of the intricate network of social norms that regulate our lives. These are social norms that may encourage us to see each other’s differences as a source of hate. Consequently, throughout this book we avoid plying the term “normal” and its opposite “abnormal” as part of our analyses. Instead, we attempt to go deeper, in an effort to understand how some views become empowered as “normative” and mainstream, even as other views make sense to other people. We also pay attention to normalization, the process by which certain perspectives, ways of doing things, and ways of reading people become reasonable, typical, expected, and lesser questioned. Consider, for example, the 2018 removal of two men from a downtown Starbucks coffee shop in Philadelphia. On a Thursday in April, African Americans Rashon Nelson and Dante Robinson, both twenty-three years old, were at the coffee shop waiting for a business partner, and asked to use the restroom before they had purchased anything. After denying their request to use the restroom, an employee also asked them to leave. When the two did not leave, an employee called the police, and their arrest on suspicion of trespassing was captured in videos that have since been viewed millions of times



Introduction 9

online.13 Their videoed arrest by White police officers, just as Mr. Nelson and Mr. Robinson’s business partner arrived to the coffee shop, drew widespread condemnation from African Americans and others. Though their arrests were later vacated, the events sparked protests at the physical Starbucks location and calls for a boycott. This led Starbucks to commit to a one-day closure of all of its U.S. locations for a training on racism and bias designed to educate 175,000 employees. A legal settlement was also eventually agreed between Mr. Nelson, Mr. Robinson, and the City of Philadelphia. Though public apologies were made, along with financial redress, the Philadelphia Starbucks arrest signaled much more than a forgettable moment of censure. The willingness of police to respond to the coffee shop employee’s request as though it were reasonable was symptomatic of a society that punitively responds to racial difference, while constructing Black males as dangerous, aggressive, and violent. The public nature of police arrest marks individuals as deviant through an “intricate rite of transition” conferring and announcing a “diagnosis” weighted in stigma that reverberates through a community.14 As one of many social acts that irreversibly mark the body, police arrest serves to reinforce social boundaries that may not be readily visible to us, but nonetheless contribute to the ecosystems of norms and standards that structure our society(ies) and ways of thinking. In this way, the mere presence of police and security staff in certain spaces assists in visibilizing social boundaries, impacting the behaviors of people vulnerably associated through markers of race, sex, and other dimensions of embodied difference. In other words, the removal of the Philadelphia coffee shop patrons inscribed social boundaries into public space, signaling through its optics that police arrest can be a semiotic process of racial formation, one that makes Black-male-ness into a state of suspicious deviance, with White-male-ness as its opposite.15 This was also the experience of thirty-seven-year-old bank patron Armstrong Victor in Quebec province in Canada, who was arrested at his place of work after being wrongly accused of theft in 2017. Supported by others who have since described his arrest as an occasion of “banking while Black,” Mr. Victor has also shared his own feelings, saying, “I feel like they [law enforcement] play with people’s lives,” and that he was made to feel like a “detained criminal.”16 Social scientists recognize these processes of racial formation as racialization, whereby physical racial characteristics are aligned with behaviors, both desirable and undesirable.17 Racial characteristics can be linked to behaviors in ways that seem as outright offensive and obvious as racial slurs, or more subtly, through their association with repeated celebrations of beauty and genius, or suspicions of criminality and deviance. As feminist theorist Audre Lorde (1934–1992) has passionately cautioned:

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Introduction

Certainly there are very real differences among us of race, age, and sex. But it is not those differences that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences and to examine the distortions that result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation.18

Consequently, we can understand that processes of racialization, together with visible confrontations and language signaling perceived human contrasts, add further complexity to social norms that many of us take for granted. This includes the ways that people are marked as suspicious and deviant, as with the fatal 2012 shooting of sixteen-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez by an Arizona-based U.S. Border Patrol agent who shot through the border fence into Nogales, Mexico, to reach his target.19 Only two years later, police in the United States shot and killed twelve-yearold Tamir Rice in a public park in Cleveland, Ohio, after emergency operators received calls describing a “guy with a pistol.” 20 Brothers Thomas Kanewakeron Gray, nineteen, and Lloyd Skanahwati Gray, seventeen, were removed by police from a campus tour of Colorado State University in 2018 after a parent of another child on the tour called emergency operators with a description of the Mohawk Native American teens, saying, “Their behavior is odd [. . .] They just really stand out.”21 The caller, a White woman of forty-five years, also described the teens’ clothing as suspicious, with “weird symbolism or wording,” although this was later revealed to correspond with metal bands the two are fans of.22 Also in 2018, a woman returning to the United States with her fifteen-yearold daughter was detained at Dallas–Fort Worth airport by a customs official claiming that their different surnames made her a suspected human trafficker. Sylvia Acosta explained to the official that she had chosen not to change her surname after marriage because of having earned her doctorate and establishing her career with her existing name. However, the official responded by telling her that she “should consider changing my name to reflect that I am [my daughter’s] mother.”23 Although a U.S. citizen, Acosta feared she could have been separated from her daughter, and later reflected on the ongoing U.S. immigration crisis, saying, “There are 3,000 children separated from their parents here.”24 Acosta and her daughter’s experience followed that of another woman, asked by a Southwest Airlines employee at Denver International Airport to prove she was the mother of her biracial son, even as she showed the toddler’s passport, with the child’s father present. The woman, Lisa Gottlieb, later described her family as a “mixed face family,” and acknowledged that while her Whiteness helps her navigate the world feeling largely accepted, the experience reaffirms her belief “that all families—regardless of how ‘traditional’ they may or may not look—are treated with dignity and respect.”25 Over and over, these types of incidents and confrontations pointing to people and their embodied differences as non-normative illustrate racializa-



Introduction 11

tion and normalization as systemic processes upheld by institutions and interpersonal behaviors. For these reasons, Embodied Difference pays particular attention to the processes by which ideas and ideologies expressed throughout the public sphere become part of our received wisdom. A BOOK IN THREE PARTS Each contribution to this book acknowledges bodies as sites of contested power. There are many strands of connection across these chapters, and readers may uncover further possible links across these studies. The chapters are organized into three parts, or units themed in reference to aspects, elements, and descriptions of the human body that are often normalized. Across these chapters and units, we ask: 1.  How are processes of normalization and racialization reflected in public discourses on the body? 2.  What site-specific social and cultural practices are implicated in the reproduction and hegemony of ideologies of difference? 3.  How do contemporary discourses of race reflect historically intersecting subjectivities and processes of meaning-making? Unit One: The Rational Mind vs. The Criminal Body As the title of unit 1 suggests, these chapters turn the popular notion of the “Criminal Mind” on its head, to explore how minds, brains, and bodies have been differently constructed as deviant. These contributions draw on perspectives in philosophy to examine the ways perpetrators of murder, genocide, and abuse are variously described in the public sphere as criminal, insane, or justified. First, Krista K. Thomason interrogates the construction of moral distance in the thinking of people who commit acts of murder and genocide (chapter 1). Thomason examines justifications voiced by perpetrators of the 2014 Isla Vista massacre of university students in California, USA, the 1994 killings of Hutu and Tutsi peoples in Rwanda, and murders at the hands of the German military during World War II (1940s). She uses these examples to argue how dehumanization succeeds in actually reminding us that victims are humans, even as it is relied upon as a tool and justification of murder. Next, Jessica Wright takes readers back to Mediterranean antiquity, to a time when Greek and Roman healers, surgeons, and theologians informed one another’s conceptions of disease (chapter 2). Her original translations of Greek and Latin texts uncover how these early explorations of bodies, by

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way of their humors and organs, established human rationality through rudimentary comparison with animals. These were early Christian perspectives that today contribute to our focus on the brain as the body’s decision-making element, and encourage us to find fault with a perpetrator’s brain and biology after they have committed acts of murder. The third chapter of unit 1 is contributed by Ute Bettray, who explains how popular concepts of transgender bodies are responding to the growing visibility of incarcerated transwomen of color in the U.S. prison-industrial complex (chapter 3). Bettray calls attention to CeCe McDonald’s incarceration in a men’s prison (2012–2014) and her transformation through reading the philosophical writings of activist Dr. Angela Davis. This account becomes the source of a discussion of transfeminism as amplified by both Davis and McDonald, and its relevance to securing global liberation for all embodiments and permutations of woman. Unit Two: The Deviant and Undesirable Body The four chapters of unit 2 examine standards that amplify, measure, and regulate our expectations of human ability and public behavior within Western society(ies). These expectations are shown to be deeply rooted in practices across literature, science, biomedicine, and the law that predicate a person’s desirability on their physical shape, appearance, sexuality, and ability to speak for themselves. This second unit of the volume begins with a coauthored study by Paul Wolff Mitchell and John S. Michael, who newly examine archival materials related to the practice of scientific racism in Philadelphia (chapter 4). Together, Mitchell and Michael revisit theories of the biological supremacy of Europeans, and the nineteenth-century scientific data that was used to support these perspectives. Their review of new data on the legacy of Samuel G. Morton confirms that the physician and phrenologist was motivated by pro-slavery impulses in his comparative measurement of human skulls. The nineteenth century also comes under scrutiny in the chapter by Dorisa Costello, which details the origins of the vampire, with a focus on the land disputes in Ireland that gave rise to bloodsucking and sexual predation as interpretations of the injustice of English settler occupation and inherited wealth (chapter 5). Those disputes defined a woman’s worth at the crossroads of race and ethnicity, miscegenation (racial and/or interspecies contamination), patriarchal empire, and sexual desire. After tracing the female vampire to its origins in British-occupied Ireland in the novel Carmilla (1871–72), Costello then examines Octavia Butler’s Fledgling (2005) and its vampire protagonist whose dark skin enables her survival outside during daylight hours. The analysis gathers implications for understanding the reoccurring



Introduction 13

symbolism of vampires across popular culture as commentaries on social inequality, from television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to the famed film trilogy Twilight Saga. Christina Jackson follows with a contribution that describes a different sort of occupation—that of corporations and other special interests colluding to exclude low-income residents of color from present-day decision-making on the redevelopment of their urban neighborhoods (chapter 6). Jackson presents San Francisco as a case study, through anecdotes from her participant observations in a section of the city impacted by the closure of a historic U.S. Naval shipyard and its lingering, environmentally toxic footprint. Altogether, her analysis describes the complex reality of the American city, suggesting ways that processes of urban redevelopment can be made more inclusive and responsive to local concerns. Unit 2 concludes with a close examination of landmark decisions in right-to-die cases that have made their way to U.S. state and federal courts (chapter 7). Barry Furrow’s analysis uncovers a pattern in how young White women have become the faces of campaigns for and against physicianassisted suicide in cases where patients have experienced incidents that severely deprived their brains of oxygen, or where the progression of terminal illness is unbearably painful. These are circumstances that typically render patients unable to advocate for themselves. Furrow’s legal analysis demonstrates how media circulation of photographic and other images of these women, notably Terri Schiavo (1963–2005), have been powerful in presenting youthful White femininity as precious. A review of these court cases illustrates how racialized imagery of bodies in differing states of wellness serves to galvanize both popular and judicial opinion. Unit Three: The Beautiful Body and Its Parts What makes bodies beautiful and perfect? The third and final section of this volume zeroes in on how bodies are scrutinized and dissected on stage, on screen, and in texts, in ways that reproduce narrow standards of beauty, perfection, and femininity. These are norms that govern how we read dancers, medical patients, and scientists as feminine, beautiful, and expected. The three chapters of unit 3 demonstrate how language is a tool in training women’s postures, reenacting social violence, and constructing beauty through biomedical intervention. This begins with a contribution by Emily August, who reinterprets Gray’s Anatomy through its aesthetic portrayal and study of the dissected human body (chapter 8). Originally published in 1858, the textbook remains relevant for its lasting influence over contemporary surgical texts. August’s novel examination of the surgical textbook as literature

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Introduction

unearths the cultural forces that shape the biomedical sciences, and which continue to impart a kind of social violence through their static representation and dismemberment of bodies, page by page. Unit 3 proceeds with insights from dance practitioner and anthropologist Kat Richter, who shares insights from her participant observation in ballet and tap classes (chapter 9). In discussing the ascent of mega-performers Misty Copeland and Michelle Dorrance, Richter interrogates the racial body politics of American dance, and offers an historical review of the cultural pedagogies of these art forms. Altogether, her analysis reveals how regimes of preferred movement hand down expectation and derision, focusing on butts and the positioning of the feet, torso, and arms to conserve perfection and regulate improvisation. Finally, Jamie A. Thomas looks to the future body and its parts, through linguistic attention to the language and visual imagery of science fiction films that revive severed heads, comatose bodies, and dormant alien life through imagined biotechnologies enacted upon women (chapter 10). Using moments excerpted from The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962), Passengers (2016), and Prometheus (2012), Thomas analyzes how these narratives center masculine voices in repeated glorification of men as scientists and engineers, with beautiful women as their test subjects. Though these films seduce with a veneer of surgical experimentation, romance, interplanetary travel, and human-alien contact, their storylines are actually reproductions of key Greco-Roman mythologies. Ultimately, these mainstream science fictions constrain public imagining by purposefully failing to envision futures in which women and people of color are not marginalized. CONCLUSION As our diverse collection of authors suggests, this book is, above all else, a humble dialogue facilitated by cross-disciplinary teamwork in the Greater Philadelphia area. Assembling first through “Morality, Race, and the Body”—events which overlapped with the 2016 U.S. presidential election cycle, our collaboration has resulted in original contributions that intentionally value women, advocate for historical context, and encourage questioning, discussion, and debate. Being lifelong learners, we gather wisdom from the enduring reflections of educator and philosopher Paulo Freire (1921–1997), who counseled, “Dialogue cannot exist without humility.”26 Having entered into Embodied Difference seeking to learn from one another and those around us, we continue to be rewarded through this dialogue, knowing that there is yet more to learn.



Introduction 15

Our coming together holds particular value in this current moment, an era in which public discourse is increasingly punctuated by bold falsehoods, misleading statements, and other less obvious antagonisms. Such interruptions devalue truth-seeking and mute historical fact, with a goal of normalizing hate and destabilizing education. However, the way this project began, through a series of unscripted public conversations on intercultural practices, urban realities, legacies of scientific racism, religious beliefs, and imagined futurisms, reasserted the rewards of listening to one another and examining both fact and fiction. Crucially, those conversations also facilitated changes to our ways of thinking, communication, and writing. We are proud these changes are reflected in each of the contributions to this volume, from the ways that authors draw upon history, to their detailing of marginalization, and description of contemporary controversies, social norms, and concerns. These are steps we take as activists, and we now invite you to join us. NOTES 1.  We gratefully acknowledge the helpful feedback we received on earlier drafts of this introduction, from friends, family, and colleagues, including Jessica Wu, Billie Thomas, James Thomas, and Alisha Berry. 2.  Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersections of Race and Sex,” 139. 3.  Intersectionality originates with legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term to describe an analytical framework and theoretical approach that deepens the antiracist and freedom-seeking activity of Black feminism. Intersectionality approaches racism, sexism, ageism, classism, and ableism, for example, not as unrelated oppressions, but as coordinated configurations of power that intersect and combine to differently impact the lives of people with multiple demographic characteristics. 4.  For more information about the girls’ empowerment initiatives of Camp Sojourner and the annual Sojourner Truth Walk through West Philadelphia, please visit the organization’s website: http://girlsleadershipcamp.org. 5.  In his There Is a River, historian Vincent Harding (1981) discusses Philadelphia as simultaneously symbolic of the stubborn social climate in America and the site of radical organizing for equality, including the National Black Convention of 1835: “For many years, when Black people sought to join the July Fourth celebrants at historic Independence Square, they were driven away by the Whites” (p. 118). 6.  Aldon Morris, The Scholar Denied. 7. Marjorie H. Goodwin, “Conversational Practices in a Peer Group of Urban Black Children.” 8.  Dell Hymes, Ethnography, Linguistics, Narrative Inequality, 64. 9.  Though Yvonne Chireau was unable to take part in this book project, we appreciate her insights as part of our inaugural public conversation in 2016.

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Introduction

10.  At the time, Jessica Wright had just completed her PhD in classics at Princeton University. 11.  Even as Laurie Greene was unable to take part in this book project, we appreciate her insights as part of our latter public conversation in 2016. 12.  Pierre Bourdieu, “The Force of Law,” 812. 13.  Jacey Fortin, “2 Black Men Settle with Starbucks and Philadelphia Over Arrest,” New York Times. 14.  Kai T. Erikson, Wayward Puritans. 15.  Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States. 16.  Darya Marchenkova, “Black Man Complains After National Bank Falsely Accuses Him of Theft,” Montreal Gazette. 17.  H. Samy Alim, John R. Rickford, and Arnetha F. Ball (Eds.), Raciolinguistics. 18.  Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex,” 375. 19. Paul Ingram, “U.S. Border Patrol Agent Murdered Mexican Teen in 2012 Shooting: Prosecutor,” Reuters. 20.  Melissa Etehad, “Cleveland Policeman Who Shot Tamir Rice is Fired, But Not Because of the 12-Year-Old’s Death,” Los Angeles Times. 21.  Mary Hudetz, “Teens’ Experience at Colorado State Shows Campus Reality for Native Americans,” The Denver Post. 22. Ibid. 23.  BBC News, “U.S. Mum and Daughter ‘Questioned Over Different Surnames.’” 24. Ibid. 25. Marwa Eltagouri, “A White Woman Was Flying With Her Biracial Son. Southwest Asked for ‘Proof’ She Was His Mother,” The Washington Post. 26.  Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 90.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alim, H. Samy, John R. Rickford, and Arnetha F. Ball (Eds.), Raciolinguistics: How Language Shapes Our Ideas About Race. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. BBC News. “U.S. Mum and Daughter ‘Questioned Over Different Surnames.’” July 10, 2018. Accessed July 12, 2018. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us -canada-44785916. Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field.” Richard Terdiman trans. Hastings Law Journal, 89 (1986): 805–853. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersections of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum (1989): 139–167. Eltagouri, Marwa. “A White Woman Was Flying With Her Biracial Son. Southwest Asked for ‘Proof’ She Was His Mother.” The Washington Post, May 30, 2018. Accessed July 12, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/



Introduction 17

wp/2018/05/29/she-attempted-to-fly-with-her-biracial-son-southwest-asked-for -proof-she-was-his-mother/?utm_term=.4c5f28c676fd. Erikson, Kai T. Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1966. Etehad, Melissa. “Cleveland Policeman Who Shot Tamir Rice is Fired, But Not Because of the 12-Year-Old’s Death.” Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2017. Accessed June 30, 2018. http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-tamir-rice-officer -fired-20170530-story.html. Fortin, Jacey. “2 Black Men Settle with Starbucks and Philadelphia Over Arrest.” New York Times, May 2, 2018. Accessed June 27, 2018. https://www.nytimes .com/2018/05/02/us/starbucks-arrest-philadelphia-settlement.html. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016 [2000]. Goodwin, Marjorie H. “Conversational Practices in a Peer Group of Urban Black Children.” Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1978. Harding, Vincent. There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981. Hudetz, Mary. “Teens’ Experience at Colorado State Shows Campus Reality for Native Americans.” The Denver Post, May 14, 2018. Accessed June 30, 2018. https:// www.denverpost.com/2018/05/13/teens-experience-campus-reality-for-native -americans/. Hymes, Dell. Ethnography, Linguistics, Narrative Inequality: Toward an Understanding of Voice. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2007 [1996]. Ingram, Paul. “U.S. Border Patrol Agent Murdered Mexican Teen in 2012 Shooting: Prosecutor.” Reuters, March 21, 2018. Accessed June 25, 2018. https://www .reuters.com/article/us-arizona-borderpatrol/u-s-border-patrol-agent-murdered -mexican-teen-in-2012-shooting-prosecutor-idUSKBN1GX37F. Lorde, Audre. “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.” In Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives, edited by Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat, 374–380. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Marchenkova, Darya. “Black Man Complains After National Bank Falsely Accuses Him of Theft.” Montreal Gazette, June 14, 2018. Accessed June 29, 2018. https:// montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/black-man-complains-after-national-bank -falsely-accuses-him-of-theft. Morris, Aldon. The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015. Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States (Third Edition). New York: Routledge, 2015.

Unit One

THE RATIONAL MIND VS. THE CRIMINAL BODY

Contributions to unit 1 of this volume dissect notions of violence, dehumanization, and social difference through contrasting, though interconnected, perspectives in philosophy. This unit takes its cue from the ways that acts of murder and genocide are sometimes explained in public settings, as a matter of the perpetrator’s momentary lapse in moral decision-making. In many such events, public discourse often speculates as to the murderer’s orientation to their victims—did the murderer regard their human target as other than human when they killed them? Killing thus remains a source of immense fascination, with access to biomedical and scientific technologies (such as brain scans) widening hope for biology-based explanations of immorality, crime, and social deviance. Seizing upon this public interest, each of the chapters in this unit describes twenty-first-century acts of violence in the examination of modern-day perspectives on crime and punishment in Western society. Relevant to these analyses are comparative studies of genocide, new translations of early Christian texts from ancient Greece and Rome, and emerging discussions of transfeminism. Consequently, these chapters unfold as interrogations of how normalized ideologies of the relationships between brain and body, gender and sexuality, and animal and human, have come to be regarded as indisputable fact. What these chapters additionally demonstrate is how the received wisdom of our present day can, in fact, be traced to religious ideas and historical concerns that have long impacted Western thought. This relates to our assumptions regarding what it means to be human, and how the category of human continues to respond to shifting notions of race, gender, sexuality, and intelligence. Centering analysis of the body and embodiment, the chapters

19

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gathered under the umbrella of unit 1 describe how structural power is reproduced through ideologies coordinated across state-sanctioned violence, biblical teaching, and the punitive nature of the prison-industrial complex.

Chapter One

Our Own Flesh and Blood Putting the Body at the Center of Violence and Dehumanization Krista K. Thomason

Talk of dehumanization has become so commonplace in our current political climate that the term threatens to become banal. Unfortunately, we seem to see ever-increasing examples of it happening in our world. Police violence, inhumane prison conditions, anti-immigration rhetoric, and rising numbers of displaced persons reflect a pressing need to not take the term for granted and also to recommit to theorizing about it. Attempting to explain and understand how average people—people with no history of, or propensity to, violence—commit sometimes unspeakable acts of cruelty has long been the subject of discussions in a variety of academic fields including history, psychology, and philosophy. Dehumanization emerges from these discussions as one of the proximate causes of violence. Put simply: if one person can dehumanize another person, it will be easier to commit violence against them. I will refer to this claim as the facilitative claim—that dehumanization facilitates violence. My aim in this chapter is to better understand precisely how dehumanization might facilitate violence. At first glance, the connection seems obvious: What else is there to know other than that the perpetrators no longer see their victims as human? How else would people be able to commit unspeakable violence against another person? Like many aspects of violence, however, what seems obvious at first glance starts to seem less obvious the closer we look. As philosopher Berel Lang has pointed out, although everyone agrees that genocide is morally wrong, we have no good account of its special moral wrongness—why is it worse than war or other kinds of mass killing?1 My contention is that dehumanization needs a similar examination. Philosophers are particularly well-equipped to tackle this sort of problem because it is conceptual in nature. We are, in other words, looking for a good definition of 21

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dehumanization. In order to construct such a definition, there are at least two things we need to try to understand. First, we need further analysis regarding what it means to “see” someone as less than human. Does the perpetrator of violence literally look at another person and see an object or an animal? Is the perpetrator’s attitude toward the victim best understood as a form of hatred, callous disregard, or cold indifference? Even if we accept the claim that to dehumanize another is to see that person as less than human, we must still work to understand the precise nature of this complex attitude. Second, we need to better understand precisely how dehumanization facilitates violence. For the purposes of this chapter, I will focus largely on this second piece, though I will say some things about the first as well. Several scholars have written about dehumanization, but in philosophical accounts there is disagreement about the facilitative claim. While some philosophers accept the facilitative claim, recent work has called it into question.2 Although this debate is rich and varied, one undertheorized element is the role that bodies themselves play in this story. This absence should be surprising; after all, the fact that victims of dehumanization are visibly human poses an obvious challenge to the perpetrator who must convince herself that her victim is not fully human. Putting bodies at the center of this analysis will, I propose, raise important questions about our current accounts of dehumanization. In order to do this sort of analysis, readers should be aware that I will discuss dehumanizing language and graphic depictions of violence in some detail. My purpose in doing so is certainly not to revel in the spectacle; rather, my intention is to show how the bodies and body parts of victims loom large in the minds and memories of their killers. EMOTIONAL DISTANCE: DOGS OR DEVILS? Accounts of dehumanization are varied and complex, and to properly reconstruct the arguments in the literature would be a book chapter unto itself. Instead of reconstructing any one account in full, I will use elements from several accounts to illustrate the main claims about how dehumanization facilitates violence. The first claim is that dehumanization either creates or inflates emotional distance between the dehumanized and the dehumanizer. This emotional distance arises from and is reinforced by the idea or belief that the victim is something other than human. Yet emotional distance can be described in at least two different ways: the victim is considered either subhuman (more like a nonhuman animal or an object) or inhuman (more like a monster or a demon). U.S. Army veteran and military theorist Lt. Col. David Grossman, philosopher and U.S. Army veteran J. Glenn Gray, and philoso-



Our Own Flesh and Blood 23

pher David Livingstone Smith present key explanations of both subhuman and inhuman emotional distance, so I will briefly review their arguments.3 Regarding the subhuman description, Grossman argues that military training relies on creating “cultural distance” from the enemy in order to make it easier for soldiers to kill.4 Creating cultural distance involves emphasizing the differences between the soldiers’ culture and the enemy culture. The enemy culture’s practices and leaders are belittled, and the set of enemies is often assigned an offensive shorthand term (e.g., “Kraut” or “Jap”).5 During the Vietnam War (1955–1975, also known as the Resistance War Against America), for example, soldiers were encouraged to think of the enemy in terms of numbers—as a “body count,” which according to one veteran made killing them as easy as “stepping on ants.”6 Likewise, Gray explains that one of the ways the military distinguishes murder from killing in war is to create images of the enemy that make it easier to kill. One of those images is the enemy as a “peculiarly noxious kind of animal toward whom one feels instinctive abhorrence.”7 When we survey the kinds of animals that victims of mass atrocities are often compared to, we find support for Gray’s claim: victims are referred to as rats, snakes, pigs, dogs, cockroaches, worms, lice, and leeches.8 Gray argues that such images were particularly prevalent in the minds of World War II soldiers who fought in the Pacific. Quoting Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny, it was common to see the Japanese forces as “an invasion of large armed ants” rather than soldiers or human beings.9 Seeing enemy troops in this way means they are “sought out to be exterminated, not subdued.”10 As such, Gray argues that soldiers who hold this image of the enemy are often “subject to rapid brutalization.”11 If enemy forces are merely pests that must be exterminated, then, unlike killing a human enemy, violence against them carries no consequences, costs, or moral ambiguity. Yet seeing someone as subhuman is only one way emotional distance might be created or reinforced. By contrast, dehumanization might involve seeing someone as inhuman. Gray argues that the inhuman image of the enemy is closely related to the subhuman, but instead of seeing the enemy as pests, soldiers see the enemy as “a devil or at least demon-possessed.”12 Devils and demons in this view are embodiments of a larger evil. The soldier clinging to this image of the enemy shows “utter disregard for the individuality of the foe.”13 If an individual member of the enemy group somehow behaves differently from the image, the soldier will not revise her view, but instead be “driven to discover motives for their behavior other than the apparent ones.”14 Smith similarly argues that to dehumanize people is to think of them as “counterfeit human beings—creatures that look like humans, but who are not endowed with a human essence.”15 Smith illustrates this possibility by reference to

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demonic possession and zombies. Both zombies and the possessed outwardly have human form, but have lost whatever inner feature makes them human.16 He writes: “To conceive of demonic possession you have to find it credible that a nonhuman spirit can inhabit a human body, and therefore that someone can be outwardly human, but inwardly demonic.”17 The inhuman mode of dehumanization treats the enemy not as an individual, but as “a representative of a principle of evil, and he is only an embodiment of this principle.”18 Similarly to the subhuman, killing the inhuman does not carry the same costs as killing humans. In fact, as Gray points out, this inhuman image of the enemy can lead the soldier to think that he is on a righteous mission against evil—“it instills in the soldier a conception of himself as an avenging angel.”19 Every enemy killed is a win for the side of good against the side of evil. Regarding both the subhuman and inhuman descriptions, the end result is supposed to be the same: seeing someone as subhuman or inhuman creates or strengthens the emotional distance needed to kill. Killing the subhuman enemy is no more terrible than killing rats, ants, or snakes. Killing the inhuman enemy is merely destroying the embodiment of a supernatural evil bent on human destruction. Both cases seem to support the facilitative claim: perpetrators of violence can use these images to sufficiently distance themselves from the humanity of the people they kill. HUMANISM AND DEHUMANIZATION The facilitative claim—that dehumanizing someone makes it easier to kill them—rests on the assumption that seeing someone as human makes it hard to kill them. Philosopher Kate Manne refers to this assumption as the “humanist” assumption, and has mounted an important critique of it.20 Although the humanist assumption is a common and compelling one, it is far more difficult to explain precisely why seeing someone as human would make it hard to harm or kill that person. It is true that there is a great deal of psychological evidence to suggest that humans both naturally sympathize with other humans and tend to anthropomorphize animals and objects that look sufficiently human.21 But, as Manne points out, to see someone as human does not automatically entail that we will be positively disposed or sympathetic toward her: For a fellow human being is not just an intelligible spouse, parent, child, sibling, friend, colleague, and so on, in relation to you and yours. She is also an intelligible rival, enemy, usurper, insubordinate, betrayer, and so on . . . she is also someone who could coerce, manipulate, humiliate, or undermine you.22



Our Own Flesh and Blood 25

Worse, as Manne argues, someone’s humanity is often the source of violence against them rather than an obstacle to it. Manne demonstrates with the 2014 case of Elliot Rodger, the Isla Vista murderer, who shot university sorority sisters at the University of California, Santa Barbara, killing six and injuring fourteen others. His motivation was revenge for what he saw as a wrongful refusal of affection. Manne writes, “Rodger ascribes to these women subjectivity, preferences, and a capacity to form deep emotional attachments [. . .] he attributes to them agency, autonomy, and the capacity to be addressed by him.”23 Rodger holds women responsible for rebuffing his affections and the murders were ways of punishing them. These women were not dogs or devils to him; they were betrayers who were (in his mind) unjustifiably malicious toward him. Manne’s point is that human beings are equally capable of being hostile and violent toward other humans qua humans. Manne’s arguments suggest that we do not have to dehumanize someone to harm her. In fact, we can often explain violence in terms of humanity rather than in spite of it. Manne’s critique of the humanist assumption calls into question the facilitative claim. Indeed, contained within some accounts of dehumanization there are obvious counters to the facilitative claim. For instance, Grossman argues that soldiers are trained to gain “moral distance” from their enemies. Moral distance requires “the determination and condemnation of the enemy’s guilt” as well as “an affirmation of the legality and legitimacy of one’s own cause.”24 Put simply, it is easier to kill someone if you believe he is a bad guy and you are a good guy. As Grossman points out, however, moral distance is not dehumanizing after all: “But the enemy is still human, and killing him is an act of justice rather than an act of extermination.”25 Bad guys are fully human; they are just bad humans deserving of punishment. Similarly, genocide and Holocaust scholar James Waller argues that perpetrators of mass atrocity convince themselves that victims deserve their suffering.26 According to Waller, victim-blaming results from the common tendency for humans to believe in a just world: if the victims have done something to earn their suffering, then perpetrators will feel less hesitation about doling out just desserts.27 One of the tenets of Nazi ideology, for example, was that Jews were part of some complex international conspiracy and thus deserved to be exposed and brought down.28 According to Waller, blaming victims is part of “a process of detachment by which some individuals or groups are placed outside the boundary within which moral values, rules, and considerations of fairness apply.”29 Yet this claim is clearly false. To think of someone as deserving rightful punishment is to see that person as responsible for their actions, as possessing bad motives, and as capable of putting those bad motives into action. These are all traits that we attribute to human beings and not to cockroaches or otherworldly demons. To see your victim as a bad

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person who deserves punishment is to precisely apply the rules of fairness to them. Like Elliot Rodger who believed women were being wrongly malicious toward him, perpetrators of violence who see their victims as enemies, criminals, or deserving of blame still see them as humans. If humans actually do not need to dehumanize others in order to do violence against them, why is dehumanizing language so common among perpetrators? Manne argues that this sort of language could be easily attributed to an attempt to humiliate and assert dominance. She writes: Given that human beings are widely held to be superior to nonhuman animals . . . denying someone’s humanity can serve as a particularly humiliating kind of put-down. When a White police officer in Ferguson called a group of [B]lack political protestors “fucking animals” three days after Michael Brown’s death, he was using this trope to demean and degrade [B]lack people, and to re-assert his own dominance.30

Rather than thinking of this sort of language as literally communicating that the speaker sees his victim as subhuman, we might instead think of it as an insult. Insulting someone doesn’t require that we don’t see that person as human. It only requires that we want to hurt them, degrade them, or make them feel bad about themselves. Insulting someone also allows us to reify our sense of ourselves as better than them or superior to them. Further, one naturally wonders how much of dehumanizing language involves rationalization and self-deception rather than actually seeing victims as subhuman or inhuman. Gray anticipates this possibility: I suspect that at some level of consciousness many of these soldiers recognize their image to be false and that their rationalization is a way of making things easier for themselves. The foreign, strange, and uncanny only partially victimize [the enemy]. They allow differences in language and customs and perhaps skin color to persuade them that internally the mind, emotions, and soul are also utterly unlike theirs.31

Appeals to the differences between yourself and your victims are, in other words, relatively flimsy attempts to deny the obvious: your victim really is a human being. Within this view, dehumanizing victims has less to do with how the killers see the victims, and more to do with how the killers see themselves. If the victims are dogs or devils, then the perpetrators get to see themselves as fully human in spite of the inhumane violence they commit. Those who favor the more straightforward interpretation of the facilitative claim have responses to Manne’s critique,32 but her work shows that the relationship between dehumanization and violence is not as clear as it might



Our Own Flesh and Blood 27

have seemed. What does it really mean to see or not see someone as human? One undertheorized aspect of this question has been the human body itself. How is it that perpetrators can look at the face of another human being and see a dog or a devil? It seems they must find a way to deny what is right in front of them. Common interpretations of dehumanization will appeal to the complex process of rationalization that happens prior to the actual violence in order to answer this question. According to this explanation, perpetrators “Other” their victims by emphasizing physical or cultural differences or by repeatedly referring to them by nonhuman terms (e.g., nonhuman animals, vermin, or disease). Once this “Othering” occurs, perpetrators no longer see a human being standing in from of them. Yet when we closely examine perpetrator testimony, we find accounts that do not support this story. Perpetrators of violence rarely see their victim’s bodies as mere matter, or as identical to the body of a nonhuman animal. In fact, in the moment of actual violence—the kill itself—perpetrators seem to be confronted forcefully with their victims’ humanity. It is the actual flesh and blood that disturbs perpetrators and that haunts them after the physical violence is over. BLOOD, EYES, AND BRAINS: DEHUMANIZATION AND THE BODY Even those who accept the facilitative claim acknowledge that perpetrators of violence almost never assert that their victims do not look human. Smith illustrates with quotes from Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS under Nazi rule and one of the architects of the Holocaust, found in the 1942 German magazine entitled Subhuman: The subhuman is a biological creature, crafted by nature, which has hands, legs, eyes, and mouth, even the semblance of a brain. Nevertheless, this terrible creature is only a partial human being [. . .] Not all of those who appear human are in fact so. Although it has features similar to a human, the subhuman is lower on the spiritual and psychological scale than any animal. Inside of this creatures lie wild and unrestrained passions: an incessant need to destroy, filled with the most primitive desires, chaos and coldhearted villainy.33

Here Himmler clearly states that the subhuman will appear outwardly to be human. He must work to convince the reader that appearances are deceiving: despite their human appearance, subhumans are not on the same “spiritual and psychological scale” and inside them lies “chaos and coldhearted villainy.” Himmler focuses on internal characteristics to differentiate the subhuman from the human, but he cannot and does not deny that they will look the same.

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Himmler’s arguments are often echoed in the accounts of perpetrators of violence. Perpetrators will often claim that victims no longer seemed or felt human to them. One of the Hutu Interahamwe (a Kinyarwanda term referring to a paramilitary organization, that also encompasses civilian actors) from the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, for example, explains: “We no longer saw a human being when we turned up a Tutsi in the swamps. I mean, a person like us, sharing similar thoughts and feelings.”34 Here we can see the same innerouter distinction. The speaker claims that Tutsis were not human in the sense that they did not have similar thoughts and feelings. That is, despite the fact that they look human, they are not really human. It thus appears that perpetrators somehow manage to ignore or look past the obvious fact that their victims look like humans, and convince themselves that they are not humans after all. Smith uses this phenomenon to support the claim that dehumanizers believe their victims are “counterfeit humans,” which is why they are able to commit violence against them: “If human-looking creatures are not really people, then we don’t have to treat them as people. They can be used instrumentally, with complete disregard for their human worth—they can be killed, tortured, raped, experimented upon, and even eaten.”35 But further examination of perpetrator testimony raises questions about this narrative. In particular, when we focus on how perpetrators respond to the bodies of their victims, we should begin to doubt the extent to which they are able to ignore the fact that their victims look like humans. First, let us return to Grossman’s combat soldiers. Grossman argues that long-range killing—using bombs, long-distance rifles, or grenades—lessens the negative responses that soldiers have to killing.36 Killing at a distance can allow soldiers to emotionally distance themselves from the fact that they are killing people: For instance, they can think of bombing “targets” rather than people. The closer the perpetrator is to the victim, the more difficult it is for her to convince herself that she is not killing someone. Close-range combat—up-close shooting, stabbing, and hand-to-hand combat—does not allow for this rationalization. According to soldier testimony, killing in such cases usually involves a brief feeling of euphoria followed by an intense feeling of guilt, disgust, and horror.37 After they kill, soldiers frequently vomit and cry; they are awestruck or horrified by the amount of blood, and they fixate on the eyes of their victims.38 As Grossman puts it, “As men draw this near, it becomes extremely difficult to deny [the victims’] humanity. Looking in a man’s face, seeing his eyes and his fear, eliminate denial.”39 We find similar reactions in interviews with the Hutu Interahamwe from the Rwandan Genocide. When asked about their first kills, three different perpetrators respond thus:



Our Own Flesh and Blood 29

Me, I was not scared of death. In a way, I forgot I was killing live people. I no longer thought about either life or death. But the blood struck terror into me. It stank and dripped . . . Death did not alarm me, but that overflow of blood, that—yes, a lot.40 At one point, I saw a gush of blood begin before my eyes, soaking the skin and clothes of a person about to fall . . . I sensed it came from my machete. I looked at the blade, and it was wet. I took fright and wormed my way along to get out, not looking at the person anymore. I found myself outside, anxious to go home.41 I do remember the first person who looked at me at the moment of the deadly blow . . . The eyes of someone you kill are immortal, if they face you at the fatal instant . . . They shake you more than streams of blood.42

As with those of the combat soldiers, we see particular themes emerging in these accounts. Seeing the victim’s flowing blood seems to be upsetting. Looking victims in the eyes is memorable and horrifying. These memories are notably visceral and physical. It is not, for example, memories of their victims as friends and neighbors or other personal connections that cause the perpetrators anxiety or guilt. Instead, it is victims’ blood and their eyes—it is their outward, bodily characteristics that are the most bothersome. Finally, we see similar themes emerge in two very different cases from the Holocaust. Historian Christopher Browning details the activities of the Einsatzgruppen (German for “task forces” or “operational groups”) Reserve Battalion 101, which was the Nazi military unit tasked with the 1942 Józefów massacre in Poland.43 They were tasked with shooting their victims in the back of the head at point-blank range.44 In subsequent firsthand accounts, one disturbing image arises over and over: if the shooter did not aim properly, the victim’s head would explode.45 Soldiers attest that “brains and bones flew everywhere,” that “blood, bone splinters, and brains sprayed everywhere and besmirched the shooters,” and that “shooters were gruesomely besmirched with blood, brains, and bone splinters [which] hung on their clothing.”46 After these types of executions, more and more of the soldiers asked to be reassigned, busied themselves with other tasks to get out of the shooting, or started sneaking off just to be alone.47 They drank heavily and had nightmares.48 Although some soldiers had trouble with the fact that they had to shoot women and children, the goriness of the executions is the more vivid detail that recurs in their accounts. At the other end of the chain of Nazi command, we find Franz Stangl, the notorious commandant at Treblinka, an extermination camp located in Poland. When journalist Gitta Sereny asks him whether he saw his victims as human beings, he says he thought of them as, “Cargo . . . I rarely saw them

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as individuals. It was always a huge mass.”49 And yet further details emerge that bear similarities with the other firsthand accounts we have seen. Years later, after the war, Stangl tells the story of seeing cows out the window of a train. They come up to the fence to look at the train and Stangl thinks to himself, “Look at this; this reminds me of Poland; that’s just how the people looked, trustingly, just before they went into the tins . . . Those big eyes . . . which looked at me . . . not knowing that in no time they’d all be dead.”50 Like the Interahamwe and the combat soldiers, Stangl remembers clearly the eyes of his victims: he sees them as trusting and innocent. Although Stangl seems to be drawing parallels between cattle and his human victims, he is clearly disturbed by the memory; Sereny writes that in retelling the story he looks “old and worn and real.”51 THE DEHUMANIZED BODY AND THE FACILITATIVE CLAIM According to one interpretation of the facilitative claim, perpetrators do not believe their victims are human—they only look human. If dehumanization relies on internal rather than external qualities to determine who is subhuman, why should close contact with the subhuman shake those judgments? It seems as though it should not: if I am assured, for example, that a particularly lifelike wax figure is not in fact human, why should I doubt that once I get up close to it? If the dehumanizer accepts that what differentiates human from subhuman is an imperceptible internal difference, it should seem puzzling that perpetrators fixate on the physical characteristics of their victims. As Gray points out, if victims are devils, they will likely fake humanlike reactions: “Like all devils, the enemy is deceiving and deceitful. He can feign mercy or fairness [. . .] trust cannot be accorded to him.”52 The dehumanized are only supposed to appear human; their physical appearance is supposed to be a charade, a clever trick, or an illusion. Why, then, are people who do violence to them haunted by their blood, eyes, and brains? We might be tempted to explain this phenomenon simply by appeal to disgust. The gory aspects of killing are just that: gory. It is a common human response to be disgusted by bodily fluids and detached body parts. Why not simply think perpetrators’ responses are disgust reactions? Although disgust might be a part of their responses, their reactions cannot be reduced to disgust. Suppose, for example, that people in an emergency waiting room see a very wounded patient covered in blood and with serious bodily injuries. We might expect those in the waiting room to be disgusted and horrified. They may even have trouble getting the images out of their heads as time



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passes. But being disturbed by such a sight still does not seem to capture the responses of the perpetrators. The perpetrators are haunted by the memories and images of bodies, even years later. Their reaction is more similar to a traumatic response than a disgust response.53 The soldiers of the Einsatzgruppen, for example, were psychologically undone by the point-blank executions. Both Eichmann and Himmler report that the soldiers were on the brink of madness.54 What is more, the bodies of their victims seem to carry more meaning for them than disgust reactions would indicate. One of the Hutu Interahamwe remarks: “The eyes of the killed, for the killer, are his calamity if he looks into them. They are the blame of the person he kills.”55 Likewise, Stangl sees trust and innocence in the cows, which is what reminds him of Poland. The blood, eyes, and brains of the victims are not simply human tissue. For the perpetrators, these things seem to be both obvious indicators of the humanity of their victims and evidence of the horror of their own actions. What should perhaps be most striking about the way that perpetrators respond to the bodies of their victims is that they never seem to think of their victims’ bodies as mere bodies or mere physical matter. First, as Manne points out, rape is common in the vast majority of mass atrocities.56 If perpetrators fully thought of their victims as dogs or devils, rape in this context would be as taboo and strange as raping a nonhuman animal or as raping a human-looking demon or zombie. Additionally, torture is likewise common, and yet if victims were merely pests to be exterminated, torture would also seem bizarre. Few people think to torture rats, cockroaches, or lice even as they exterminate them. Even when perpetrators are encouraged to think of their victims in terms of “cargo” or “body counts,” the victims’ physical appearance is often what disrupts this rationalization. For the Hutu aggressors, seeing the flowing blood of their victims destroys the illusion of the Tutsis as just a mass of creatures. As Grossman puts it, the physical and bodily aspects of killing are the things that “eliminate denial.”57 It would be a mistake, however, to expect that just because perpetrators see the bodies of their victims as human they therefore always experience sympathy for them. As Manne argues, human beings can see each other as hostile, hateful, and threatening while still seeing each other as fully human. Combat soldiers often desecrate the bodies of their victims. For example, as journalist Kevin Sites shares of his interview with a Marine who fought in the Vietnam War, experienced his men crucifying an enemy Viet Cong soldier: “They got bamboo that was lying around, made a cross . . . My men crucified the soldier after they stripped him naked.”58 Corpses were maimed, burned, and posed in macabre tableaus. Combat soldiers took souvenirs of teeth and skulls. It’s tempting to see such desecration

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as an extension of dehumanization—only people who did not regard their victims as human could do such things. But ex-combat soldiers are clear that these actions are born from a desire for revenge or domination. The Marine whose men crucified the Viet Cong soldier explained that his men had recently faced heavy fighting and that they had lost their lieutenant—as a result, “They were chomping at the bit to kill.”59 When the Marine tells his soldiers to take the body down, they respond by saying, “They’d do the same thing to us if the situation was reversed.”60 Notice the soldiers appeal to mutual hatred and hostile reciprocity to justify their actions—they do not, for example, claim that the victim did not matter or was not human. Gray argues that close combat is far more likely to lead soldiers to personalize rather than depersonalize their anger toward the enemy. The enemy becomes responsible both for the hardships of combat and for the personal tragedies of lost comrades.61 If this is correct, then the desecration of bodies is an act of vengeful triumph. Not only have the soldiers killed the enemy, they hold total power over his body, which they can humiliate and mutilate. Teeth and skulls are trophies that symbolize dominance and victory—no one takes trophies from cockroaches or ants. Again, however, these actions do not presuppose that the victim’s body is mere matter. It is rather a remainder of the enemy, and denigrating it is “payback” for real or imagined crimes. Dehumanized bodies are not mere bodies. Moreover, they are evidence, indicators, or reminders of the victim’s humanity. What does this observation tell us about the facilitative claim? First, it raises questions about the extent to which perpetrators really can ignore or look past their victims’ appearances. Recall that a common interpretation of dehumanization holds that dehumanized people are treated as though they only look human. Yet, the interviews and firsthand accounts presented herein seem to suggest the opposite: human bodies and body parts seem to reflect the humanity of victims in obvious and concrete ways. Second, it is often in the act of violence or just after it that perpetrators see their victims as human. The blood, eyes, and brain matter that they encounter as they wield their weapons drives home that they are killing true human beings. Aggressors do not doubt that this is human blood and that these are human eyes. As we saw from the memoirs and testimonies, most of the dehumanizing rationalizations occur before the violence and well after the violence. Only once the combat soldier has overcome the shock of spilling someone’s blood does she then tell herself that this person was the enemy, that this person is part of the “body count,” or that this person deserved to die. As Gray points out, it is more common for soldiers to think of their enemies in abstract terms prior to actually entering combat. Once they begin fighting, the enemy becomes “nearly human and, like us, tired and fighting for his



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life.”62 Closeness of combat surely does not engender sympathy or kindness, but as we have seen, even then the victims are not simply part of the body count. Perpetrators are capable of atrocious cruelty in raping, torturing, and mutilating the corpses of their victims. Yet these cruelties are more likely to be acts of revenge and domination rather than the result of a cavalier and careless attitude toward someone they see as no longer human. VIOLENCE AND DEHUMANIZATION According to the standard reading of the facilitative claim, physical violence is the inevitable result of dehumanization. As this narrative goes, killers manage to convince themselves through a complex process of rationalization that their victims are not human. This process creates the emotional distance that is necessary to kill. Once that distance is in place, perpetrators no longer experience any obstacles or resistance to killing their victims. The analysis provided here suggests at least two ways of rethinking this traditional narrative. First, when perpetrators kill, seeing the blood, eyes, and brains of the victim is an interruption of the dehumanization process rather than an extension of it. The flesh and blood of the victim presents itself to killers as undeniable testimony as to the victim’s humanity. The killers cannot see blood, eyes, and brain matter as anything other than belonging to a human being. This explains why these physical characteristics are memorable even to killers who seem unrepentant or who go on to kill many more people. For perpetrators who do have lasting damage from killing, we can explain why images of blood and eyes stay with them. The moment of violence on the body dispels the illusion that the person whose blood they now see is something other than human. As a result, the actual act of violence can be rehumanizing rather than dehumanizing. Second, the analysis invites us to rethink what role violence is playing in contexts of dehumanization. One of the mistakes in the traditional interpretation of dehumanization is in thinking that if killers know the people they kill are human, the killers would not kill them. On the standard reading, violence is the result of distance or detachment—if I do not see you as human, I feel free, so to speak, to do anything I want to you, and acts of violence become easier to commit. As we can see from first-person accounts, however, the act of killing, along with its bodily and visceral aspects, leaves killers with no doubt that they have killed a human being. We cannot therefore definitively conclude that violence is the result of moral or emotional detachment. Just as human beings qua human beings can be hostile to one another, human bodies can be sites of conquest, domination, humiliation, and threat. Seeing

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a human body as human does not preclude anyone from harming it, defiling it, or desecrating it. The facilitative claim ultimately assumes that horrific violence is outside the realm of human possibility—that such violence only becomes possible for us once we have (psychologically) removed the victim from the category of human. By contrast, my analysis suggests that violence is fully within the realm of the human—unfortunately, it can be just as human as kindness or compassion. NOTES   1.  Berel Lang, “The Evil in Genocide,” in Genocide and Human Rights: A Philosophical Guide, ed. by John K. Roth (New York: Palgrave, 2005), 5–17.   2.  This disagreement is best captured by two companion papers in the recent issue of Social Theory and Practice. See Kate Manne, “Humanism: A Critique,” Social Theory and Practice 42 (2016): 389–415 and David Livingstone Smith, “Paradoxes of Dehumanization,” Social Theory and Practice 42 (2016): 416–43   3.  Lt. Col. David Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (Boston, MA: Back Bay Books, 1995). J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle (Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 1998). David Livingstone Smith, Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2012).  4. Grossman, On Killing, 160.  5. Ibid., 161.  6. Ibid.  7. Gray, The Warriors, 148.   8.  Smith provides this list by surveying the rhetoric from mass atrocities including the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge regime, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Darfur Genocide. See David Livingstone Smith, Less Than Human, 142–54.  9. In Gray, The Warriors, 149. 10. Ibid. 11.  Ibid., 151. 12.  Ibid., 153. 13.  Ibid., 154. 14.  Ibid., 155. 15. Smith, Less Than Human, 101. 16.  Ibid., 100–101. 17.  Ibid., 100. 18. Gray, The Warriors, 155–56. 19.  Ibid., 158. 20.  Manne, “Humanism,” 390. 21.  Smith discusses this literature at length. See Less Than Human, 50–54, 216, 229–31.



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22.  Manne, “Humanism,” 399. 23.  Ibid., 401. 24. Grossman, On Killing, 164. 25. Ibid. 26.  James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 212. 27.  Ibid., 213. 28.  Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 37. 29. Waller, Becoming Evil, 202. 30.  Manne, “Humanism,” 412. 31. Gray, The Warriors, 151. 32.  Smith argues that the notion of the “uncanny,” where victims can both look human and nonhuman simultaneously, can address Manne’s critique. See Smith, “Paradoxes of Dehumanization,” 430–36. 33.  Quoted in Smith, Less than Human, 155. 34. Jean Hatzfeld, Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak (New York: Picador Press, 2003), 47. 35. Smith, Less Than Human, 159. 36. Grossman, On Killing, 97–98. 37.  Ibid., 115. 38.  Ibid., 114–17. 39.  Ibid., 119. 40. Hatzfeld, Machete Season, 49. 41.  Ibid., 21. 42.  Ibid., 21–22. 43. MacNair has argued that the Einsatzgruppen suffered from killing-induced PTSD. Rachel MacNair, Perpetrator-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002), 46–48. 44.  Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998), 60–61. 45. Browning, Ordinary Men, 64–65. 46. Ibid. 47.  Ibid., 65–69. 48.  Ibid., 69. 49.  Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 201. 50. Sereny, Into That Darkness, 201. 51. Ibid. 52. Gray, The Warriors, 155. 53.  In many of the PTSD cases that MacNair cites, the perpetrators talk about their victim’s blood or have nightmares where they are in blood-soaked rooms. 54. MacNair, Perpetrator-Induced Traumatic Stress, 47. 55. Hatzfeld, Machete Season, 22. 56.  Manne, “Humanism,” 412–15.

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57. Grossman, On Killing, 119. 58.  Kevin Sites, The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won’t Tell You About What They’ve Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War (New York: Harper Perennial, 2013), 167–68. 59. Sites, Things They Cannot Say, 169. 60.  Ibid., 168. 61. Gray, The Warriors, 138–39. 62. Gray, The Warriors, 136.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bergen, Doris. War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: Harper Perennial, 1998. Gray, J. Glenn. The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle. Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 1998. Grossman, Lt. Col. David. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. Boston, MA: Back Bay Books, 1995. Hatzfeld, Jean. Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak. New York: Picador Press, 2003. Lang, Berel. “The Evil in Genocide.” In Genocide and Human Rights: A Philosophical Guide, edited by John K. Roth, 5–17. New York: Palgrave, 2005. MacNair, Rachel. Perpetrator-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002. Manne, Kate. “Humanism: A Critique.” Social Theory and Practice 42 (2016): 389–415. Sereny, Gitta. Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience. New York: Vintage Books, 1983. Sites, Kevin. The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won’t Tell You About What They’ve Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War. New York: Harper Perennial, 2013. Smith, David Livingstone. Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2012. ———. “Paradoxes of Dehumanization.” Social Theory and Practice 42 (2016): 416–43. Waller, James. Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Chapter Two

Are We Our Brains? How Early Christianity Shaped Western Ideas About Power, Morality, and Personhoood Jessica Wright On 1st October 2017, Stephen Paddock shot and killed fifty-eight concertgoers in Las Vegas, wounding hundreds more. Afterward, as police searched for a motive, Paddock’s brain was sent to Stanford University to be tested for abnormalities. Speaking with reporters, Paddock’s brother said that he hoped the examination would reveal a tumor, “because if they don’t, we’re all in trouble.”1 Thereafter, no significant abnormalities could be found.2 Even if there had been, however, it is unclear what causal relationship experts could have drawn between Paddock’s brain structure and his violent attack.3 Over forty years ago, a pecan-sized tumor was discovered in the brain of Charles Whitman, who committed the first mass shooting on a school campus, at the University of Texas at Austin, but the relevance of the tumor to his actions also remains uncertain.4 “The supposed brain tumor was a very handy excuse for the fact that he went out and shot people,” warned Dr. Hannes Vogel, the director of neuropathology at Stanford University Medical Center, “I don’t think I ever heard in my own experience of someone on a homicidal rampage because they had a brain tumor.” The desire to locate the cause of mass shootings in organic mental illness is a familiar one.5 It is also complicated and fraught with tensions.6 Diagnosing a mass shooter as “crazy”—or focalizing an existing diagnosis, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or autism—establishes an association between mental illness and violence that encourages discrimination against those who suffer from mental illness or who have non-normative brain function.7 The expectation that mental illness leads to violence has fostered excessive use of sedatives, isolation, and physical restraint in psychiatric contexts.8 The question of whether restricting gun ownership among those flagged for mental disorder is legalized discrimination (a form of ableism) or a sensible 37

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protective measure is hotly contested.9 The impulse to blame the brain can be a way of displacing responsibility from individuals and the societies that shape them onto nonhuman agents, such as chemicals and brain cells.10 The postmortem analysis of Paddock’s brain reflects the pathologization of mass shootings in American culture. It also exhibits a phenomenon known as cerebral subjectivity or brainhood, that is, the identification of the human subject with the brain.11 The expectation that abnormality in the brain—rather than, say, in the heart or liver—might provide insight into the motives of a mass shooter echoes the current cultural assumption that, in the words of neuroscientist Dick Swaab, “We are our brains.”12 Affective disorders such as depression are routinely understood and treated in terms of brain chemistry.13 Imaging technology that records bloodflow within the brain is presented as a record of thoughts, motivations, and even “personhood.”14 Popular science books regularly assert or deny the differences between “male” and “female” brains, and in trans politics the brain has become, for some, a site for locating gender identity outside of sex organs.15 We are living in the era of the brain.16 That the human subject is basically identical with their brain is so ubiquitous in modern Western culture as to seem entirely natural.17 Yet, philosophers of neuroscience critique the equation of human subject and brain to be a logical fallacy.18 Historians and anthropologists, for their part, have argued that cerebral subjectivity is culturally specific, and is shaped and enforced by narratives (for example, The Matrix), technology (such as brain scans), community norms, and the use of language (consider, for example, “the brains of the operation”).19 The historian of science Fernando Vidal has argued, furthermore, that cerebral subjectivity is driven by an ideology that privileges reason and autonomy as defining characteristics of the human subject.20 This ideology valorizes independence and individuality, and denies or diminishes the importance of mutual reliance (both among human beings, and between humans and other animals) and modes of intelligence not associated with rationality.21 Classical liberalism, which established the dominance of this ideology in Western Europe, has its roots in Enlightenment philosophy, which flourished in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During that time, selfhood became associated with mental activity, which was thought to be mediated through—and, increasingly, embodied within—the brain.22 It was a concept of selfhood that was distinctively human; animals became “mere machines or automata . . . wholly incapable of speech, reasoning, or, on some interpretations, even sensation.”23 The identification of the human subject with their brain provides scope for establishing hierarchies and hegemonies that are based on perceived differences in the brain, but mapped onto differences in subjectivity. In this way cerebral subjectivity becomes the basis for various forms of discrimina-



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tion. Ableism manifests, for example, as the preference for appropriate brain functionality. The common claim that the “female brain” is structured for emotionality and compassion, and the “male brain” for logic, essentializes gender stereotypes and justifies the undervaluation of women within a social hierarchy that privileges reason.24 Scientific racism in the nineteenth century, as discussed by Mitchell and Michael in chapter 4 of this volume, was supported by the argument that brain size or volume, perceived as a race-specific feature, correlates to intelligence. Thus, Samuel G. Morton (1799–1851), infamous physician and skull-collector of Philadelphia, created a racial taxonomy of skull capacity, by filling skulls with lead shot and mustard seed, and measuring these variable volume amounts.25 Animal studies scholars argue that these different kinds of discrimination are rooted in the fundamental assertion of biological hierarchy between animals and human beings, found already in ancient Greek philosophy, with its “chain of being” (rocks, plants, animals, humans, gods), and transformed in early Christian theology through detailed argumentation for why animals lack moral choice, and so could not be “saved.”26 The identification of the brain as a substitute for the self is a cultural and historical phenomenon that has roots in philosophies and theologies that have justified (and, in many cases, continue to justify) discriminatory violence. Understanding how the brain came to be so closely associated with human personhood reveals the implicit assumptions and stakes of cerebral subjectivity. When we search the brain of a mass shooter for abnormalities, we invoke a set of implicit linkages between brainhood, rationality, and personhood that undergird ongoing habits of discrimination. The brain has become such an effective symbol of power that the naturalization of its association with a particular kind of subject (the Enlightenment man: European, Christian, ablebodied) seems to grant that subject superior value and hegemony. This chapter focuses on a single cultural moment in the history of humanizing the brain: the emergence of Christianity as a dominant religion in the fourth century CE.27 I argue that preachers and theologians of this period played a key role in rendering the brain as distinctively human. Their motive, I suggest, was to emphasize the exceptionality of human beings as rational and moral creatures that could enter into communion with God. Their strategies included the personification of the brain, the attribution to it of attributes and actions considered unique to human beings, and the erasure, or forgetting, of the animal bodies that had been used by anatomists to understand human brain function. Among the consequences of this rhetorical project was the development of the brain as a symbol of hegemony on bodily, political, and earthly levels. At the root of modern cerebral subjectivity and brainbased discrimination, I argue, is early Christian theology. Understanding how our core assumptions about the “natural” connection between the brain

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and human identity developed is a necessary step toward interrogating the role that these assumptions play in our own contemporary politics, relationships, and everyday encounters. This chapter has three sections. First, I argue that in ancient medical science, human and animal brains were thought to be essentially the same— differing in degree, if at all, rather than in kind. Second, I explore how early Christian authors diverged from medical authorities in personifying the brain and linking it to qualities associated with the human being, in order to render it a symbol of human exceptionalism and domination. Finally, I turn to the erasure of animal bodies from this picture, focusing on the conspicuous absence of brains in early Christian comparisons between the anatomy of human beings and other animals. COMPARATIVE ANATOMY IN ANCIENT GREEK MEDICINE Ancient medical authors discovered the structures and functions of the brain through dissection. Most famous were Herophilus of Chalcedon (320s–250s BCE) and Erasistratus of Ceos (330–250s BCE), two Greek medical scientists at the royal court of the Ptolemies in Alexandria, then the capital of Egypt, who were thought to have performed dissections and even vivisections on human beings in approximately the third and second centuries BCE.28 Later ancient commentators condemned these experiments as a kind of “butchery,” treating human bodies as animal bodies, a violation that human nature ought to reject.29 Less controversial were the animal dissections and vivisections conducted by the Greek physician Galen of Pergamum (130–210 CE), who performed his experiments in public before audiences of doctors, philosophers, and the intellectual elite of Rome.30 Many of Galen’s experiments were designed in particular to resolve the hotly contested question of which bodily organ was the instrument of the governing soul, the heart or the brain. Galen came down in favor of the brain, and his expert demonstration and argumentation of his case shaped the course of medical and scientific history.31 Galen’s experiments presumed the comparability of animal and human bodies.32 In order to prove the importance of the brain’s ventricles for human intelligence, Galen opened the skull of a living ox and showed how the animal lost sensation, motor control, and eventually consciousness, when its brain’s ventricles were probed or pierced.33 In this experiment, Galen assumes that the function of the ventricles within animal and human brains must be alike.34 At the time, one popular method for identifying the organ of the governing soul was to trace the bodily origin of human speech, which was considered to



Are We Our Brains? 41

be the central manifestation of reason.35 Stoic philosophers argued that since the voice travels through the windpipe, it must have its origin in the thorax, and therefore the soul must govern from the heart.36 Galen rejected this argument, and instead demanded proof through anatomical demonstration.37 Taking a live (and squealing) pig, he opened the animal up and tied its laryngeal nerve with a strip of firm wool. Immediately, the animal stopped squealing. Once Galen released the ligation, the animal resumed its cries. Clearly, Galen argued, the laryngeal nerve carries the impulse for speech from the brain into the voice box: the brain, therefore, must be the source of human speech and the organ of the governing soul.38 His argument was persuasive, despite the fact that pigs themselves were thought to possess neither speech nor reason. In order to enhance the persuasiveness of such experiments, Galen minimized the differences between human and animal brains. He was aware, however, that the pioneering anatomist Erasistratus, who had performed human dissections at the court of the Ptolemies, had described at least one structural difference between animal and human brains. In a long work devoted to proving that the brain was the instrument of the governing soul, Galen quoted Erasistratus’s argument that human brains have more folds and convolutions than animal brains: “[A]s it is in other animals—deer, hare, and any other that far excels the rest in running being well provided with the muscles and sinews useful for this activity—, so in man, since he is far superior to the other animals in thinking, this [sc. the cerebellum] is large and has many folds.”39 According to Erasistratus, human and animal brains were essentially the same organ, differing only by degree.

The use of animal models for human brains was a source of tension. According to ancient Greco-Roman philosophical and popular thought, human beings were fundamentally different from animals because they were rational.40 How could the operation of human reason be traced in animal brains? One strategy was to focus on functions associated with reason, but shared with animals.41 Through experiments upon the brain, Galen demonstrated its responsibility for sensation, motor control, and vocalization.42 That the human brain must be responsible for reason also was understood implicitly as an extension of those functions. Late antiquity authors were bolder in identifying the bodily instruments of reason.43 Following a fourth-century medical author called Posidonius of Byzantium, whose own works are lost, the philosopher and bishop Nemesius of Emesa (fl. 390s CE) identified the middle ventricle of the brain as the instrument of rational thought.44 The proof that Nemesius relied upon was mental illness. Different kinds of mental illness, he argued, were caused by inflammation to different cerebral ventricles: damage to the front two

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ventricles caused hallucinations, since the front ventricles were responsible for perception; damage to the middle ventricle caused irrational thought; injury to the rear ventricle, meanwhile, caused loss of memory.45 This shift in evidence from dissection to illness allowed late antiquity authors to bypass the tension between animal models and the human brain. HUMANIZING THE BRAIN IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY Early Christian authors attributed distinctively human characteristics to the brain. We have already seen how Nemesius located rational thought in the brain’s middle ventricle. The preacher John Chrysostom (347–407 CE) interpreted the “helmet of salvation” (described in the Christian scriptures) as the skull, designed like a helmet to protect the soft and vulnerable brain.46 His explanation was that, since the brain is the source of knowledge of good and evil, and therefore the agent or instrument of moral choice, the helmet (cranium) that protects it is necessary for human salvation.47 This was a radical suggestion: the health of the brain might be necessary for the salvation of the soul. It was an old philosophical axiom that animals acted on natural instinct, while human beings had independent agency.48 This capacity for choice was thought to lead to moral dilemmas. Knowledge of good and evil, for Chrysostom, amounted to knowledge of whether things are “necessary” or “forbidden.” In its capacity as source of this knowledge, the brain guaranteed human difference. Early Christian authors also personified the brain. The influential bishop Ambrose of Milan (339–397 CE) described the head as a civic official.49 His contemporary Gregory of Nyssa (335–394 CE) compared the brain to a charioteer, steering the body through the nerves.50 John Chrysostom taught his congregants to think of the brain as a king who would be severely dishonored by the influx of alcoholic fumes after a long night of drinking, or as a master assaulted by his slave (the stomach) after eating rich food in excess.51 However, the personification of the brain was not entirely new. Already in the second century CE, Galen had criticized those who argued that the brain was the organ of the governing soul on the grounds that it resided as a king within the citadel of the skull.52 (The proper argument, Galen explained, was that the brain was the source of the sensory and motor nerves, enacting physiological, rather than political, control.53) Christian authors were building on the metaphors of earlier authors. Nonetheless, the personifications of the brain in early Christian texts were more prevalent and varied than anything that had come before. The brain, as agent or instrument of control within the



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body, was identified with the human being as an agent of control in political, professional, and domestic spheres. Personification of the brain could also represent the loss of control, as in Chrysostom’s image of the brain as a master assaulted by his slave. Theodoret of Cyrrhus (393–457 CE), who was perhaps a student of John Chrysostom, described the brain of a person suffering from insanity as struggling like a drowning man in the flood of internal bodily fluids.54 Such metaphors reflected the belief that a healthy brain was necessary for self-control. This is perhaps best illustrated by the story of Macarius of Alexandria, a fourth-century Egyptian monk who went out into the desert in order to “conquer sleep.”55 Monastic discipline during this period was notoriously harsh, and Macarius was an expert in it. It was something of a surprise, therefore, when he returned early from the desert, out of fear that he might dry out his brain and so drive himself mad.56 Macarius welcomed all kinds of bodily injuries as a consequence and even as a goal of his monastic discipline, but he drew the line at damaging his brain. The insanity caused by brain damage would threaten the very self-control and discipline that constituted his monastic identity.57 The brain was personified as the agent of control because it was the fundamental organ of control within the human body. In this respect, it could be aligned and even identified with the human person. As the organ of rationality and governance within the human body, the brain also served as a symbol of an ideology that espoused human dominance over other animals. The human being, wrote Nemesius of Emesa, was established as ruler over the animals, just as the rational soul is ruler over the body.58 Sharing a material body with animals but immaterial reason with God, the human being was “assigned a place on the boundary between the non-rational and the rational nature.”59 Distinct from angels, humans were thought to have material bodies; distinct from animals, humans were thought to have rational souls.60 It was the brain that mediated between these two realms. The brain’s governing role enabled human beings to be self-governing animals, that is, to exercise moral choice. It also provided an internal, bodily map of the governing hierarchy of the material world and the cosmos as a whole. Accordingly, the human being was balanced between body and soul, earth and heaven, animal and god. Within the body, the brain played a role similar to a material governor over material parts, through its communion with the immaterial, rational soul. The personification of the brain was rhetorical strategy not only for conceptualizing the function of the brain within the body, but also for mapping out the relationship between human beings and other animals. Humanizing the brain became a strategy in early Christianity for asserting human exceptionality and dominance.

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THE ERASURE OF ANIMAL BODIES Early Christian authors followed a traditional philosophical and medical precept that each individual part of creation was designed for its proper function.61 Just as a battlement is designed to protect its inhabitants from projectile weapons, so eyebrows protect the eyes.62 Just as the bee is designed for the production of honey, so the human being possesses a body that is perfectly designed for the activities of a rational soul.63 Through this logic, the exceptional rationality of the human being could be mapped anatomically. While the examples developed to prove this argument came from medical and philosophical literature, early Christian authors deployed them within a new theological frame: God’s design of the human body for the activities of reason was evidence for the exceptional relationship between human beings and their creator.64 As Nemesius of Emesa wrote in his treatise On the Nature of the Human Being, God would not “fit the body with a soul that was not suitable.”65 That is to say, no body lacking the instruments of reason could possibly be endowed with a rational soul. The irrationality of animals could be proved through their anatomy.66 Likewise, the special relationship between human beings and their creator took anatomical form. Nemesius and his colleagues extracted from medical and scientific literature nuggets of information about the human body that clustered into four key anatomical features considered distinctive to the human being: upright stature, hands, mouthparts, and the brain. Each of these features contributed symbolically and practically to the manifestation of reason. In speeches and pamphlets dedicated to the story of creation or the theme of divine providence, early Christian authors systematically described human anatomy, with particular attention to the ways in which these four anatomical features had been tailored to suit the rational soul.67 At stake in such accounts was the dominance of human beings in the natural order. Ancient authors noticed that the human body lacked physical defenses or weapons (such as fangs, claws, or armored plates). This could be interpreted as a sign that the design of human bodies was flawed, or that human beings were intentionally at the bottom of the natural order. Early Christian authors rejected both of these interpretations, and argued instead the vulnerability of the human body was actually necessary for its usefulness as the instrument of reason, thereby enabling the creation of weapons and tools through which humankind could master the animal kingdom.68 Each description of a part of the human body as instrument of reason therefore contributed to the larger argument that human beings were designed to rule over the earth, just as the brain was designed to rule within the body.



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Gregory of Nyssa used the upright stature of human beings to justify human kingship over the earth: “But the human being is upright in form, and stretches up to heaven, looking upward. For these are the qualities of rulership, and signify royal value.”69 His older brother Basil of Caesarea (330–379 CE) wrote similarly that “cattle, being earthly, are bowed toward the earth, but the human being, a heavenly creature, differs as much by the form of bodily construction as by worthiness of soul.”70 The upright stature of the human being was a symbolic representation of earthly and cosmic hierarchy.71 The eminence of the human soul was mapped onto and measured through the literal eminence of the human body. Upright stature was not purely symbolic. Standing on two legs also gave human beings the use of their hands, with which to carry out all manner of human activities—above all, writing.72 As a form of speech, writing demonstrated the adaption of the hands to “the needs of reason,” enabling the expression of the mind in the sensible world.73 The usefulness of the hands to the activities of the rational soul was not confined to the work of the hands themselves, but enabled another adaptation of human anatomy. “For if the human being had no hands,” Gregory wrote, “the parts of the face would have been constructed entirely like those of fourfooted animals, suited to the function of eating.” In a carefully orchestrated domino effect, the creation of hands allowed “articulate speech,” through proper configuration of the “parts of the mouth.” Thus, “since the hand attached to the body, the mouth is free to serve reason.”74 The voice was a primary index of reason in ancient thought. We saw above how Galen argued—persuasively!—that the bodily origin of squealing in a pig must be the same as the bodily origin of the human voice, and therefore the organ of the governing soul. The construction of the mouthparts was essential for the manifestation of the rational soul.75 “What is the mouth of man,” Ambrose continued, “but an avenue for discourse, a fount of disputation, a reception hall for words, a repository of the will?”76 Upright stature, hands, and mouthparts all enabled the manifestation of reason in the human body, and so set humankind apart from (and over) other animals. Yet, the chief instrument of reason—the part of the body through which thinking operated—was the brain. “The brain,” wrote Ambrose, “is the cause of all that we have discussed [. . .] the source of our nervous system and of all the sensations of voluntary movement.”77 The centrality of the brain was both physiological and symbolic: “The mind,” wrote Lactantius (250–325 CE), “is almost divine, assigned rulership not only over the creatures of the earth, but also over the eminent body, situated at the summit of the head as though on a high peak, looking down over everything.”78

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Yet, whereas the anatomical features thought to support the manifestation of rational thought (upright stature, hands, mouthparts) were consistently described in relation to their animal counterparts, early Christian authors only ever talked about the brain in its human form. Nemesius described in detail how the middle ventricle of the brain served as the instrument of rational thought, but he did not explain the function of the middle ventricle within the brain of an ox, for example, or a pig. Early Christian sources do not draw attention to Erasistratus’s claim that the human brain has more convolutions than that of other animals, despite the fact that this would have sealed the Christian claim to the superior design of the human body for reason and governance. What motivated this avoidance of the animal brain in early Christian accounts of human anatomical superiority? One possible explanation is found in an early Christian text called On the Soul, by the North African preacher Tertullian of Carthage (160–240 CE). Tertullian lived at around the same time as Galen, and he wrote before Galen’s dissections of the brain became common currency. In keeping with many of his day, Tertullian believed that the ruling part of the soul governed from the heart. Nonetheless, his arguments are relevant for later Christian understandings of the brain. In a chapter entitled “On the Governing Soul,” Tertullian mocked the arguments of those who denied that there was any governing soul at all. Their claim, he reported, rested on animal dissection, and the discovery that some animals continue to live and even retain consciousness even “if you cut off their head (flies, wasps, and locusts) or extract their heart (goats, tortoises, and eels).” Their conclusion, according to Tertullian, was that since the soul could not be located consistently in any one part of the body, it must not exist at all.79 This kind of argument was common in ancient Greco-Roman medical and philosophical literature. Comparative anatomy was central to ancient understandings of the human body and its relationship to the soul, and it was a widely held assumption that the governing soul must operate through the same organ in all animals.80 Yet, Tertullian flatly denied its relevance: “Everyone knows,” he wrote, “that whoever judges the nature of the human soul from the condition of animals is himself without either heart or brain.”81 The activities of the governing soul were distinctive to the human being, and the functions of its bodily instrument were to be likewise. This does not mean that Tertullian located the unique rationality of the human being in the soul alone. In a discussion of the resurrection of the dead, he expressly refuted those who supposed that the rational soul was immaterial, detached from the body and its anatomical structures. According to Tertullian, the human body was a kind of “thinkery” (cogitatorium in the Latin)—an instrument or building devoted to thought.82 It was not that body



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parts shared with animals were not responsible for the activities of the rational soul, but that comparison with animals simply could not illuminate their rational function within the human body. While upright stature, hands, and mouthparts were considered distinctively human variations of parts shared with animals, the animal and human brain looked so similar that animal brains and hearts were useful medical models for understanding their human equivalents. This was the premise for animal dissection and comparative anatomy. Galen had minimized the differences between animal and human brains in order to maximize the persuasiveness of his animal models; early Christian authors could have emphasized the difference between animal and human brains, but even this would have admitted a continuum, a difference of quality rather than kind. Following Tertullian’s radical denial that animal bodies could model human reason, subsequent Christian preachers chose to erase animal bodies from the picture, and described the brain solely in terms of its function within the body of the human being. CONCLUSION In early Christianity, the brain became a distinctively human organ. It was personified. It was responsible for morality and human salvation. It governed within the body and enabled the human to govern the earth. It was described, unlike other bodily servants of reason, without comparison to animal equivalents. This humanization enabled preachers to “prove” the exceptionality of the human being, isolated in their rational and governing capacity, but materialized in the brain. The erasure of animal bodies from late antiquity discussions of the brain established the foundations for the myth that the brain is identical with the human subject, both on the individual level (a mass murderer’s motives can be found by examining his brain), and on the level of the species as a whole (humans are those animals that are characterized by reason, that is, by their brains). The importance of the brain in modern, Western conceptions of the human subject is rooted in an ancient theological claim to exceptionalism and hegemony. When Stephen Paddock’s brain was sent for testing, “speculation focused on a disease process known as fronto-temporal lobar degeneration,” which “affects areas of the brain that are vital for ‘executive functions’ like decision-making and social interaction.”83 The brain as a site of governance is at the center of the debate about mass shootings, mental illness, and gun control—despite the fact that “[t]he possibilities, neuropathologically, for explaining this kind of behavior are very few.”84 Analyzing the brain of a

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deceased mass shooter cannot explain motive or cause; it can only flag abnormalities that may or may not have anything to do with the person’s actions. The power that the brain possesses in this situation resides not in the efficacy of the investigative techniques, but in the brain’s history of standing in for the human subject, and specifically as an agent of domination and control. The humanizing of the brain in early Christianity was part of a larger project to establish the exceptionality of the human being as rational, moral, and capable of salvation. Because of this exceptionality, so the argument went, human beings were supposed to rule over all (other) animals. The logic of human hegemony, grounded in the symbol of the normal functioning brain, supports the assumption, endemic to Western culture, that animals have lesser value than human beings. It also fosters other, intrahuman hegemonies, which manifest as discrimination, when persons considered to have abnormal or dysfunctional or inferior brains are edged closer to the category of the inhuman. The valorization of the brain as a site of human identity and agency is entangled in an ancient mythic structure that posits the cerebral subject (brain or human being) as the superior and governing body on individual, political, and cosmic planes. NOTES 1. Melissa Quinn, “Las Vegas Gunman’s Brother: I Hope They Find a Tumor in His Head When an Autopsy Is Done.” Washington Examiner, October 3, 2017. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/las-vegas-gunmans-brother-i-hope-they-find -a-tumor-in-his-head-when-an-autopsy-is-done. Accessed March 2018. Also quoted in Elif Batuman, “Searching for Motives in Mass Shootings.” The New Yorker, November 27, 2017. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/searching-for -motives-in-mass-shootings. Accessed March 2018. 2. Sheri Fink, “Las Vegas Gunman’s Brain Exam Only Deepens Mystery of His Actions.” The New York Times, February 9, 2018. https://www.nytimes .com/2018/02/09/us/las-vegas-attack-paddock-brain-autopsy.html. Accessed March 2018. 3.  See the discussion in Sheri Fink, “Las Vegas Gunman’s Brain Will Be Scrutinized for Clues to the Killing.” The New York Times, October 26, 2017. https:// www.nytimes.com/2017/10/26/us/las-vegas-shooting-stephen-paddock-brain.html. Accessed March 2018. 4.  Quoted in Fink, “Las Vegas Gunman’s Brain Exam Only Deepens Mystery of His Actions.” 5.  A national public opinion survey conducted in 2013 showed that 46 percent of Americans believe that persons suffering from severe mental illnesses are “far more dangerous than the general population,” despite the fact that less than 3 percent of all violent crimes are perpetrated by individuals diagnosed with a serious mental



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disorder. See Colleen L. Barry, Emma E. McGinty, Jon S. Vernick, and Daniel W. Webster, “After Newtown—Public Opinion on Gun Policy and Mental Illness,” The New England Journal of Medicine 368 (2013): 1077–81; James L. Knoll and George D. Annas, “Mass Shootings and Mental Illness,” in Gun Violence and Mental Illness, edited by Liza H. Gold and Robert L. Simon, 81–104. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2016.   6.  Jeffrey W. Swanson, E. Elizabeth McGinty, Seena Fazel, and Vickie M. Mays, “Mental Illness and Reduction of Gun Violence and Suicide: Bringing Epidemiologic Research to Policy,” Annals of Epidemiology 25 (2015): 366–67: “mental health stakeholders . . . [face] the difficult prospect of debunking the public perception that ‘the mentally ill are dangerous,’ while attempting to leverage that very perception to build support for (much-needed) public funding to improve the mental health care system in the United States—and to achieve this goal without also spawning crisisdriven laws that might overreach in restricting the rights and invading the privacy of people with mental illnesses.”   7.  See Knoll and Annas, “Mass Shootings and Mental Illness,” 94–95.  8. Jonathan M. Metzl, The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became A Black Disease. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2009.   9.  See Knoll and Annas, “Mass Shootings and Mental Illness,” 95–96; Swanson et al., “Mental Illness and Reduction of Gun Violence and Suicide.” The discrimination implicit in the association between mass shootings and mental illness is also racialized: see Jonathan M. Metzl and Kenneth T. MacLeish, “Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms,” American Journal of Public Health 105, no. 2 (2015): 240–49, and also the comments in Batuman, “Searching for Motives.” 10.  Jonathan M. Metzl: “When [we] associate these incidents with mental illness, that association allows us to throw up our hands and not take action because the problem is in somebody else’s brain.” Quoted in Nicole Anderson Cobb, “Speaking about gun violence with Dr. Jonathan Metzl,” Smile Politely, March 28, 2018. http://www .smilepolitely.com/culture/speaking_about_gun_violence_with_dr._jonathan_metzl. Accessed March 2018. See also the discussion in Knoll and Annas, “Mass Shootings and Mental Illness,” 91–94. 11.  Fernando Vidal, “Brainhood, Anthropological Figure of Modernity,” History of the Human Sciences 22, no. 1 (2009): 5–36; Fernando Vidal and Francisco Ortega, Being Brains: Making the Cerebral Subject. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2017. 12.  Dick F. Swaab, We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer’s, translated by Jane Hedley-Prôle. New York, NY: Spiegel & Grau, 2015. 13.  Joseph Dumit, “Is It Me or My Brain? Depression and Neuroscientific Facts,” Journal of Medical Humanities 24, no. 1–2 (2003): 35–47. See also Nikolas Rose, “Neurochemical Selves,” in The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century, 187–223. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. 14.  Joseph Dumit, Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. For a concise critique of fMRI as

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a technique for imaging brain activity, see David Biello, “Much of What We Know about the Brain May Be Wrong: The Problem with FMRI,” Ideas.Ted.Com (blog), August 30, 2016. http://ideas.ted.com/much-of-what-we-know-about-the-brain-may -be-wrong-the-problem-with-fmri/. Accessed March 2018. 15.  For a critical perspective on the attribution of gendered characteristics to brains, see Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2010. For a clear account of the stakes in such a debate, see Melissa Hines, Brain Gender. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. A study based on fMRI technology has suggested that the difference between transgender and cisgender identity can be traced in brain structure: Sadhana Bharanidharan, “Transgender People’s Brain Structures Are Different From Cisgender Folks,’ Study Suggests,” Medical Daily, March 16, 2018. Accessed March 2018. 16.  In 1989, President H. W. Bush announced that the 1990s would be the Decade of the Brain. See M. Goldstein, “Decade of the Brain. An Agenda for the Nineties,” Western Journal of Medicine 161, no. 3 (1994): 239–41. 17.  Consider the following book titles: The Private Life of the Brain: Emotions, Consciousness, and the Secret of the Self (Susan Greenfield, published 2000); Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are (Joseph LeDoux, published 2003); Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human (V. S. Ramachandran, published 2011); Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are (Sebastian Seung, published 2012). 18.  M. R. Bennett and P. M. S. Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003, 68–107; Liad Mudrik and Uri Maoz, “‘Me & My Brain’: Exposing Neuroscienceʼs Closet Dualism,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 27, no. 2 (2015): 211–21. 19. Emily Martin, “Self-Making and the Brain,” Subjectivity 3, no. 4 (2010): 366–81; Cornelius Borck, “Toys Are Us: Models and Metaphors in Brain Science,” in Critical Neuroscience: A Handbook of the Social and Cultural Contexts of Neuroscience, edited by Jan Slaby and Suparna Choudhury, 113–33. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012; Fernando Vidal, “Frankenstein’s Brain, ‘The Final Touch,’” SubStance 45, no. 2 (2016): 88–117. 20.  Vidal, “Brainhood, Anthropological Figure of Modernity,” History of the Human Sciences 22, no. 1 (2009): 10: “Inflated claims and a revolutionary rhetoric [sc. about the concept of the human as understood through neuroscience] have an obvious self-serving function, sustaining the cerebral subject ideology, and reinforcing the alliance between the norms and ideals of individualistic autonomy and self-reliance on the one hand, and on the other hand the prestige of the advanced technology supposed to demonstrate that we are our brains.” 21.  Teresa Brennan, The Transmission of Affect, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004, 2, 16–19, identifies the development of the “self-contained” and rational subject as one of the greatest misconceptions of modern Western psychiatry. See also Tobin Siebers, Disability Theory, Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2008, 12, the ideology of ability (“at its simplest the preference for able-bodiedness”) began with “the Enlightenment theory of rational autonomy, which represents the inability to reason as the sign of inbuilt inferiority.”



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22.  Vidal, “Frankenstein’s Brain,” 90–91. 23.  Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500–1800. London: Allen Lane, 1983, 33; see also Charles Patterson, Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust. New York, NY: Lantern Books, 2002, 16–23. 24.  See Fine, Delusions of Gender. 25.  See the detailed deconstruction of Morton’s arguments in Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man. Revised edition. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996, 83–88. See also Paul Wolff Mitchell and John S. Michael’s contribution to this volume. 26.  On the “chain-of-being” and its persistence in Western philosophy, see A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936. For the argument that the exceptionalism of human morality and reason goes back to ancient Greek philosophy, see Richard Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993. For the idea that early Christian theology lays the foundations for speciesism, see Patterson, Eternal Treblinka, 20. For a nuanced and concise account of these developments, see Beth Berkowitz, “Animal,” in Late Ancient Knowing: Explorations in Intellectual History, edited by C. M. Chin and Moulie Vidas. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015, 38–40. Patricia Cox Miller presents a compelling challenge to the field in her recent book, In the Eye of the Animal. For the argument that understanding speciesism can scaffold understanding of intrahuman discrimination, see Abraham Paul DeLeon, “The Lure of the Animal: The Theoretical Question of the Nonhuman Animal,” Critical Education 1, no. 2 (2010): 5–8. 27.  Christianity received imperial authorization in 324 CE, after the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine I in 313 CE. The Roman empire in Western Europe dissolved by 476 CE, but Christianity had already permeated every level of society. 28.  All dates are approximate. For a concise overview of the work of Herophilus and Erasistratus, see James Longrigg, “Anatomy in Alexandria in the Third Century BC,” The British Journal for the History of Science 21, no. 4 (1988): 455–88. A very short summary of Herophilus’s anatomy of the brain can be found in J. M. Pearce, “The Neuroanatomy of Herophilus,” European Neurology 69, no. 5 (2013): 292–95. 29.  For example, Tertullian, On the Soul 10.4: “The famous Herophilus, the physician, or rather butcher, who cut up innumerable persons in order to examine nature, who hated humans in order to have knowledge” (translation out of the Latin from Heinrich von Staden, Herophilus: The Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 190). 30.  An excellent account of Galen’s public performance of dissection procedures is Maud Gleason, “Shock and Awe: The Performance Dimension of Galen’s Anatomy Demonstrations,” in Galen and the World of Knowledge, edited by Christopher Gill, Tim Whitmarsh, and John Wilkins, 85–114, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Julius Rocca examines Galen’s dissection manuals by testing them on the brains of dead cows: Julius Rocca, Galen on the Brain: Anatomical Knowledge and Physiological Speculation in the Second Century AD, Leiden: Brill, 2003. 31. See especially the discussions of Galen’s logical demonstrations in R. J. Hankinson, “Galen’s Anatomy of the Soul,” Phronesis, no. 36 (1991): 197–233.

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On Galen’s long-lasting influence, see Luis García Ballester, Galen and Galenism: Theory and Medical Practice from Antiquity to the European Renaissance, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. 32.  In the opening to his dissection manual, Galen instructs his reader to “choose those apes [for dissection] most like man, with short jaws and small canines. You will find other parts also resembling man’s, for they can walk and run on two feet” (Galen, On Anatomical Procedures 1.2, translation out of the Greek adapted from Charles Singer, On Anatomical Procedures: De Anatomicis Administrationibus Libri IX, London: Oxford University Press, 1956, 3). When he comes to the brain, in On Anatomical Demonstrations 9 and 10, however, Galen uses the brain of an ox. See Galen, On Anatomical Procedures 10.1: “Ox brains, ready prepared and stripped of most of the cranial parts, are generally on sale in the large cities” (translation out of the Greek from Singer, On Anatomical Procedures, 226). 33. Galen, On the Opinions of Hippocrates and Plato 7.3.15–16. 34.  Galen expresses this requirement in a discussion of dissecting the respiratory organs, when he reassures his audience that “there was no need to dissect apes since not only these but almost all other land animals are similar in structure” (Galen, On Prognosis 5.10, translation out of the Greek from Vivian Nutton, Galen. On Prognosis, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1979, 97). 35.  See, for example, Nemesius of Emesa, On the Nature of the Human Being 1.4: “The creator linked articulate speech to thought and reasoning, making it a messenger of the movements of the intellect” (translation out of the Greek adapted from R. W. Sharples and Philip J. van der Eijk, Nemesius: On the Nature of Man, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008, 39–40). 36. Galen, On the Opinions of Hippocrates and Plato 2.5.18–19, quoting the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus: “For in general the region from which discourse is sent out must be the region where reasoning and thinking and the preparation of utterance take place, as I said. But these activities manifestly take place about the heart, since both speech and discourse are sent out from the heart through the windpipe” (translation out of the Greek from Phillip De Lacy, Galeni De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1978, 131). 37. Galen, On the Opinions of Hippocrates and Plato 2.5.1: “But those who suppose that speech or respiration comes about by the agency of the heart have been deceived by proximity in location, not being aware that even if some part is near an activity, whatever it may be, there is no necessity at all that the part also be the source of the activity” (translation out of the Greek from De Lacy, Galeni De Placitis, 129). 38.  See the description in Galen’s On Anatomical Procedures 11.4, and the discussions in Gleason, “Shock and Awe,” 97–100 and Susan P. Mattern, Galen and the Rhetoric of Healing, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008, 157–60. 39. Galen, On the Opinions of Hippocrates and Plato 7.3.10 (translation out of the Greek from De Lacy, Galeni De Placitis, 443). 40.  Basil of Caesarea, Hexameron 9.3: “Animals all have the same soul, characterized by lack of reason” (my translation out of the Greek). 41.  This method shares its basic principles with contemporary behavioral neuroscience. See Thomas R. Insel, “From Animal Models to Model Animals,” Biological



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Psychiatry 62 (2007): 1337–39; Nikolas S. Rose and Joelle M. Abi-Rached, Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013, 82–109. 42. Galen, On the Opinions of Hippocrates and Plato 2.4.42. 43.  Late antiquity is the period between antiquity and the medieval period. It is often considered to fall between the third and the seventh centuries CE. 44.  Nemesius of Emesa, On the Nature of the Human Being 12.68. For Posidonius, see the excerpt preserved in Aëtius of Amida, Medical Books 6.2. 45.  Nemesius of Emesa, On the Nature of the Human Being 13.69–70. 46.  For the “helmet of salvation,” see Ephesians 6:17: “Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (NRSV translation out of the Greek). 47.  John Chrysostom, Homily on the Letter to the Hebrews 5. 48. Nemesius of Emesa, On the Nature of the Human Being 25.87: “For nonrational animals are ruled not by themselves but by nature, and receive limits and a determined season” (translation out of the Greek from Sharples and van der Eijk, Nemesius of Emesa, 157). 49.  Ambrose of Milan, Hexameron 6.9.57. 50.  Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man 30. 51.  John Chrysostom, Homily on the First Letter to Timothy 13 and Homily on Matthew 44.7. 52. Galen, On the Opinions of Hippocrates and Plato 2.4.17. 53. Galen, On the Opinions of Hippocrates and Plato 2.3.6. 54.  Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Compendium of Heretical Fables 5.9: “But if sickness should fall upon the cerebral membrane, the corruption of the vapors and humors damages the brain, which, being washed around on all sides, ceases to receive the activity of the soul, but resembles someone who is underwater, moving hands, feet, and other body parts at random” (my translation out of the Greek). 55.  Palladius of Galatia, Lausiac History 18.3. 56.  Palladius of Galatia, Lausiac History 18.3.4–8: “He added this: ‘Unless I had come inside under a roof and got some sleep rather quickly, my brain would have so dried up as to drive me into delirium for ever after. But I conquered so far as depended on me, and I gave way so far as depended on my nature, which had need of sleep.’” (my translation out of the Greek). 57.  Compare the warning of the Roman priest Jerome to the teenage girl Demetrias, who had committed herself to a lifetime of celibacy: “I have seen the health of the brain damaged through excessive abstinence in certain individuals of both sexes, and especially in those who dwell in cells that are damp and cold, with the result that they do not know what they are doing or in which direction they turn, what they ought to say, what they ought to do” (Letter 130.17, my translation out of the Latin). 58.  Nemesius of Emesa, On the Nature of the Human Being 1.13. 59.  Nemesius of Emesa, On the Nature of the Human Being 1.5 (translation out of the Greek from Sharples and van der Eijk, Nemesius of Emesa, 40). 60.  Nemesius of Emesa, On the Nature of the Human Being 1.3.

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61.  In relation to Galen, see Mattern, Galen and the Rhetoric of Healing, 154: “Nature designed and built man from parts, the way an architect builds a house or a carpenter makes furniture.” Nancy G. Siraisi, “Vesalius and the Reading of Galen’s Teleology,” Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 1 (1997): 3–4, discusses the later reception of this idea. 62.  Ambrose of Milan, Hexameron 6.9.58. 63.  John Chrysostom, On the Statues 11.11: “Nor did [the creator] make the body in such a way for its own sake, but so that it might participate in the rational soul” (my translation out of the Greek). Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man 8: “Since indeed the human being is a rational animal, the instrument of the body must be constructed to suit reason” (my translation out of the Greek). On the bee, see Ambrose of Milan, Hexameron 8.21. 64.  Prominent among their sources was Galen’s On the Usefulness of the Parts, which examined each part of the body in terms of the functions for which it had been designed. 65.  Nemesius of Emesa, On the Nature of the Human Being 2.36 (translation out of the Greek from Sharples and van der Eijk, Nemesius of Emesa, 74). 66.  Nemesius of Emesa, On the Nature of the Human Being 2.37 (quoting Galen): “[F]or the body is the instrument of the soul, and therefore the parts of animals differ greatly from each other, since their souls do also” (translation out of the Greek from Sharples and van der Eijk, Nemesius of Emesa, 76). 67.  A popular genre during the fourth and fifth centuries CE was the hexameral sermon, a commentary on the opening chapters of Genesis (“hexameral” comes from a Greek word meaning “pertaining to six days,” referring to the six days of the creation narrative in Genesis). 68.  Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man 7; Ambrose of Milan, Hexameron 6.6.36–37. 69.  Gregory of Nyssa, On the Constitution of the Human Being 8 (my translation out of the Greek). 70.  Basil of Caesarea, Hexameron 9.2 (my translation out of the Greek). 71.  See also Nemesius of Emesa, On the Nature of the Human Being 1.13: “But perhaps it is absurd that things which have no share in wisdom, and live only by natural impulse, that are bent towards the earth and display their servitude in their form, should be said to have been brought to be for their own sake” (translation out of the Greek from Sharples and van der Eijk, Nemesius of Emesa, 48). 72.  On the hands, see Ambrose of Milan, Hexameron 6.9.69. 73.  Gregory of Nyssa, On the Constitution of the Human Being 8 (my translation out of the Greek). 74.  Gregory of Nyssa, On the Constitution of the Human Being 8 (my translation out of the Greek). 75.  See Gregory of Nyssa, On the Constitution of the Human Being 9: “Since, therefore, the mind is an intelligible and incorporeal thing, it would have had unshared and unmixed grace, if its movement were not made manifest through some device. On this account, this instrumental construction was necessary, so that, touch-



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ing the vocal organs like a plectrum, it might translate internal movements through a certain impression of speech” (my translation out of the Greek). 76.  Ambrose of Milan, Hexameron 6.9.68 (translation out of the Latin from Savage, Ambrose of Milan, 277–78). 77.  Ambrose of Milan, Hexameron 6.9.61 (translation out of the Latin from Savage, Ambrose of Milan, 273). 78. Lactantius, On the Workmanship of God 8 (my translation out of the Latin). 79.  Tertullian of Carthage, On the Soul 15.2 (my translation out of the Latin). 80. Galen, On the Usefulness of the Parts 8.4. 81.  Tertullian of Carthage, On the Soul 15.6 (my translation out of the Latin). 82.  Tertullian of Carthage, On the Resurrection of the Dead 15.16. 83.  Fink, “Las Vegas Gunman’s Brain Will Be Scrutinized for Clues to the Killing.” 84.  Fink, “Las Vegas Gunman’s Brain Will Be Scrutinized for Clues to the Killing,” quoting Dr. Hannes Vogel.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Ballester, Luis García. Galen and Galenism: Theory and Medical Practice from Antiquity to the European Renaissance. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Barry, Colleen L., Emma E. McGinty, Jon S. Vernick, and Daniel W. Webster. “After Newtown—Public Opinion on Gun Policy and Mental Illness.” The New England Journal of Medicine 368 (2013): 1077–81. Batuman, Elif. “Searching for Motives in Mass Shootings.” The New Yorker, November 27, 2017. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/searching-for -motives-in-mass-shootings. Accessed March 2018. Bennett, M. R., and P. M. S. Hacker. Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Berkowitz, Beth. “Animal.” In Late Ancient Knowing: Explorations in Intellectual History, edited by C. M. Chin and Moulie Vidas, 36–57. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015. Bharanidharan, Sadhana. “Transgender People’s Brain Structures Are Different From Cisgender Folks,’ Study Suggests.” Medical Daily, March 16, 2018. https://www .medicaldaily.com/transgender-peoples-brain-structures-are-different-cisgender -folks-study-423107. Accessed March 2018. Biello, David. “Much of What We Know about the Brain May Be Wrong: The Problem with FMRI.” Ideas.Ted.Com (blog), August 30, 2016. http://ideas.ted.com/ much-of-what-we-know-about-the-brain-may-be-wrong-the-problem-with-fmri/. Accessed March 2018. Borck, Cornelius. “Toys Are Us: Models and Metaphors in Brain Science.” In Critical Neuroscience: A Handbook of the Social and Cultural Contexts of Neuroscience, edited by Jan Slaby and Suparna Choudhury, 113–133. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.

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Brennan, Teresa. The Transmission of Affect. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. Cobb, Nicole Anderson. “Speaking about gun violence with Dr. Jonathan Metzl.” Smile Politely, March 28, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/26/us/las -vegas-shooting-stephen-paddock-brain.html. Accessed March 2018. De Lacy, Phillip. Galeni De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1978. DeLeon, Abraham Paul. “The Lure of the Animal: The Theoretical Question of the Nonhuman Animal.” Critical Education 1, no. 2 (2010): 1–26. Dumit, Joseph. “Is It Me or My Brain? Depression and Neuroscientific Facts.” Journal of Medical Humanities 24, no. 1–2 (2003): 35–47. ———. Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Fine, Cordelia. Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2010. Fink, Sheri. “Las Vegas Gunman’s Brain Exam Only Deepens Mystery of His Actions.” The New York Times, February 9, 2018. https://www.nytimes .com/2017/10/26/us/las-vegas-shooting-stephen-paddock-brain.html. Accessed March 2018. ———. “Las Vegas Gunman’s Brain Will Be Scrutinized for Clues to the Killing.” The New York Times, October 26, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/26/us/ las-vegas-shooting-stephen-paddock-brain.html. Accessed March 2018. Gleason, Maud. “Shock and Awe: The Performance Dimension of Galen’s Anatomy Demonstrations.” In Galen and the World of Knowledge, edited by Christopher Gill, Tim Whitmarsh, and John Wilkins, 85–114. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Goldstein, M. “Decade of the Brain. An Agenda for the Nineties.” Western Journal of Medicine 161, no. 3 (1994): 239–41. Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. Revised edition. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996. Hankinson, R. J. “Galen’s Anatomy of the Soul.” Phronesis, no. 36 (1991): 197–233. Hines, Melissa. Brain Gender. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Insel, Thomas R. “From Animal Models to Model Animals.” Biological Psychiatry 62 (2007): 1337–39. Knoll, James L., and George D. Annas. “Mass Shootings and Mental Illness.” In Gun Violence and Mental Illness, edited by Liza H. Gold and Robert L Simon, 81–104. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2016. LeDoux, Joseph E. Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are. New York, NY: Viking, 2002. Longrigg, James. “Anatomy in Alexandria in the Third Century BC.” The British Journal for the History of Science 21, no. 4 (1988): 455–88. Lovejoy, A. O. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936. Martin, Emily. “Self-Making and the Brain.” Subjectivity 3, no. 4 (2010): 366–81.



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Mattern, Susan P. Galen and the Rhetoric of Healing. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Metzl, Jonathan M. The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became A Black Disease. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2009. Metzl, Jonathan M., and Kenneth T. MacLeish. “Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms.” American Journal of Public Health 105, no. 2 (2015): 240–49. Miller, Patricia C. In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Mudrik, Liad, and Uri Maoz. “‘Me & My Brain’: Exposing Neuroscienceʼs Closet Dualism.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 27, no. 2 (2015): 211–21. Nutton, Vivian. Galen. On Prognosis. CMG, V 8.1. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1979. Patterson, Charles. Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust. New York, NY: Lantern Books, 2002. Pearce, J. M. “The Neuroanatomy of Herophilus.” European Neurology 69, no. 5 (2013): 292–95. Quinn, Melissa. “Las Vegas Gunman’s Brother: I Hope They Find a Tumor in His Head When an Autopsy Is Done.” Washington Examiner, October 3, 2017. https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/las-vegas-gunmans-brother-i-hope-they-find-a -tumor-in-his-head-when-an-autopsy-is-done. Accessed March 2018. Ramachandran, V. S. The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2011. Rocca, Julius. Galen on the Brain: Anatomical Knowledge and Physiological Speculation in the Second Century AD. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Rose, Nikolas. “Neurochemical Selves.” In The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century, 187–223. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. Rose, Nikolas S., and Joelle M. Abi-Rached. Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013. Seung, Sebastian. Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Sharples, R. W., and Philip J. van der Eijk, eds. Nemesius: On the Nature of Man. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008. Siebers, Tobin. Disability Theory. Corporealities: Discourses of Disability. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2008. Singer, Charles. On Anatomical Procedures: De Anatomicis Administrationibus Libri IX. London: Oxford University Press, 1956. Siraisi, Nancy G. “Vesalius and the Reading of Galen’s Teleology.” Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 1 (1997): 1–37. Sorabji, Richard. Animal Minds and Human Morals. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993. Staden, Heinrich von. Herophilus: The Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

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Swaab, D. F. We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer’s. Translated by Jane Hedley-Prôle. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015. Swanson, Jeffrey W., E. Elizabeth McGinty, Seena Fazel, and Vickie M. Mays. “Mental Illness and Reduction of Gun Violence and Suicide: Bringing Epidemiologic Research to Policy.” Annals of Epidemiology 25 (2015): 366–76. Thomas, Keith. Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500– 1800. London: Allen Lane, 1983. Vidal, Fernando. “Brainhood, Anthropological Figure of Modernity.” History of the Human Sciences 22, no. 1 (2009): 5–36. ———. “Frankenstein’s Brain, ‘The Final Touch.’” SubStance 45, no. 2 (2016): 88–117. Vidal, Fernando, and Francisco Ortega. Being Brains: Making the Cerebral Subject. New York: Fordham University Press, 2017.

Chapter Three

Making the Case for Transfeminism The Activist Philosophies of CeCe McDonald and Angela Davis Ute Bettray

INTRODUCTION A young transwoman walks down the street in her Minneapolis, Minnesota, neighborhood with her boyfriend and some friends to go to the grocery store in June of 2011.1 As the group passes by a local bar, its members are confronted with harassing slurs such as, “You African babies, go back to Africa,” and “faggot,” and “tranny.” She gets called a “Black bitch” and is physically assaulted by a White woman, who hits her with a beverage glass, causing serious injury to her face. The group of harrassers also includes a White man who advances toward the woman, hurling insults regarding her trans body. Telling him to back off, the woman reaches for her purse, and pulls out a pair of scissors to protect herself with. When he continues his assault, he runs into her scissors, which precipitates his death. The woman is then arrested on the spot, to later face charges of second-degree murder.2 In the deliberations leading up to her planned trial by jury, the prosecutors do not even consider that the woman may have acted in self-defense and that her transness and Blackness may have been key factors motivating her assault in the first place. However, massive public attention garnered by the case induces prosecutors to offer a plea bargain that reduces the criminal charges down to second-degree manslaughter and criminal negligence. Facing the prospect of a twenty-year sentence, the woman accepts the plea, and begins to serve her forty-one-month prison sentence. As this woman has not undergone sex reassignment surgery, she is placed in a men’s prison where she is denied the appropriate regimen of female hormones she requires (though she later is granted the hormones after public pressure on the Minnesota Department of Corrections). There, she reads 59

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books by African American philosopher and feminist activist Dr. Angela Y. Davis. While in prison, she also pens a letter to Laverne Cox, the transwoman actress who starred in the hit Netflix television series Orange Is the New Black (2013–2019) as incarcerated transwoman Sophia Bursett. In that television series, Cox’s character commits credit card fraud in order to amass the funds necessary to pay for gender-affirming surgery. Having achieved their desired physical sex and gender by the time of sentencing, Cox’s character is housed in a low-security women’s prison, which becomes the principal setting of the television series. Back in the real world, writing from men’s prison, the woman describes her own incarcerated circumstance in her letter to Cox, and congratulates the actress, while relating her earlier dreams of becoming an actress. Upon receiving the letter, Cox is deeply moved by the woman’s hopefulness and optimism. Consequently, Cox and other activists—among them activists fighting to free Palestine, rally publicly around the incarcerated woman’s case, forming a committee to free her. As a result of this activist campaign, the woman is ultimately granted an early release from prison in January 2014, after having served nineteen months. In August 2014, the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club awards her their Bayard Rustin Civil Rights Award, named for openly gay African American activist Bayard Rustin (1912–1987), who was a champion of nonviolence alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and whose humanitarian efforts continued all throughout his life. While this may seem like an impossible or incredible tale, it is indeed one woman’s true life story. Her name is CeCe McDonald, born in 1989 in South Chicago. In early adulthood, McDonald moved to Minneapolis to pursue a life there, seeking more opportunities for herself, such as transitioning physically into womanhood and studying fashion at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Following her release from prison, McDonald has become a socialist, prison abolitionist, and feminist activist in her own right. While in prison, what McDonald seems to have centered on of Angela Davis’s writings appears to be Davis’s focus—however briefly—on the incarcerated transwoman of color who is preoperatively placed in a men’s prison. Davis conceives of prisons as part of the broader scheme of the prison-industrial complex, which comprises “an array of relationships linking corporations, government, correctional communities, and media” that involve “[t]he exploitation of prison labor by private corporations” (Davis 2011, 84), which are themselves a part of the globalized economy of our neoliberal age (Davis 2012, 148–49). She exposes the prison-industrial complex as a privatized, for-profit enterprise, the concept and design of which crosses national boundaries, and extends into Australia, Africa, and parts of Europe (Davis 2012, 148–49).3



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Focusing on the case of CeCe McDonald, the present chapter will trace some of the key components of Angela Davis’s philosophical arguments regarding incarcerated transwomen. Importantly, Davis is critical of the institution of the prison-industrial complex itself, and supports the abolition of prisons in an effort to liberate incarcerated transwomen of color and dismantle prisons as punitive forms of structural oppression.4 Since these particular elements of Davis’s feminism have received little scholarly attention, I will provide a careful analysis of her reading of these women and her proposed approaches to free them. These areas of Davis’s philosophical engagements are worthy of attention because incarcerated transwomen of color are increasingly vulnerable to violence as a tool of marginalization and structural oppression. Freeing these women, as both Davis and McDonald argue in concert with a host of other scholars and activists, entails attention to the liberation of oppressed people across communities of color, women, and people of varying sexualities and gender presentations, some of whom are incarcerated or have survived incarceration. In this chapter, I also approach Davis’s late feminism as transfeminism for the first time within feminist theory. Though Davis has herself never used the term transfeminism, I contend that she has produced an essential piece of transfeminist theory by theorizing the positionality of the incarcerated transwoman through books she wrote in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. For example, in her The Meaning of Freedom and Other Difficult Dialogues, she argues: Just as feminism implicitly accepted, in the beginning at least, the binary structure of gender, it has had to respond to the critiques of the binarism that emanate from the very interesting transgender, intersex, and gender-nonconforming theories and activism, which in turn have had to engage with intersectionalities of race and class (2012, 192).

What I describe here as Davis’s transfeminism is therefore shaped by her willingness to see feminism’s core assumption of the sex/gender binary constantly destabilized by a radical openness to welcoming new genders, and more specifically, new gendered embodiments. She simultaneously conceives of these embodiments of gender as having always (already) been racialized and classed, and consequently located at the culminating intersections5 of multiple oppressions and privileges. Transfeminism more generally, as one of the emerging and arguably most interesting current strands of feminism, is still in the process of being defined. As Davis asserts in The Meaning of Freedom and Other Difficult Dialogues, this new strand of feminism argues for putting the body back into feminism, by way of a radical opening up of the categories of gender

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and woman so that feminism can advocate for the equality of all genders, and of cisgender6 women and transwomen alike. Transfeminism at its core promotes a true transing of the category of gender, and also of woman. According to transfeminist and transgender theorist Bobby Noble, as a prefix the term trans signifies both identities and gendered embodiments. The act of transing in turn implies “critical crossings and mobilities of previously categorically fixed territories. Trans as well as transing reveals the socially constructed nature of categories and histories that can be reconceptualized in radically different ways” (Noble 2012, 45-59). In the present chapter, I aim to delineate a budding transfeminism of color, centered on the incarcerated transwoman of color. I aim to outline how contributions to this transfeminism of color have been made by both Angela Davis and CeCe McDonald; a Black feminist philosopher and civil rights leader, whose writings deeply influence the activism of a formerly incarcerated Black transwoman. HUMANITY AND WOMANHOOD OF INCARCERATED TRANSWOMEN Violence within the prison-industrial complex surfaces as a regular means to exert control over bodies. Incarcerated pre-operative transwomen in men’s prisons are routinely subjected to sexual, physical, and emotional violence from fellow inmates and prison guards. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (of the Department of Justice), of the more than 3,200 transgender people in prisons nationwide during 2011–2012, 39.9 percent reported experiencing sexual assault or abuse by either another prisoner or member of prison staff.7 In addition, the rates of abuse experienced by incarcerated transgender persons in 2011–2012 dwarfed rates of abuse for all prisoners in general.8 Such carceral violence is likely to be heightened due to how transwomen, and especially transwomen of color, are sometimes viewed by others as “fake” or “imitation” women, as opposed to “real” cisgender women. Within such views, transwomen are deemed as less than human. The question of how this violence, and particularly sexual violence, as a key structural element of the prison-industrial complex, establishes or shapes transwomanhood through dehumanization is an important one for feminists and transfeminists seeking to dismantle the carceral state both nationally and transnationally.9 Following her release from a men’s prison, where she survived sexual violence during her incarceration, in June 2014 CeCe McDonald was asked to speak at the S14 Socialism Conference, an annual activist gathering convened in Chicago by the nonprofit Center for Economic Research and Social Change



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with sponsorship from the International Socialist Organization. The conference event featuring McDonald was titled, “The Struggle for Trans Liberation: A Conversation with CeCe McDonald.”10 Speaking to the gathered audience (I have since observed her remarks as published in a YouTube video from the conference), McDonald explained how she refuses to be defined by the violence she endured while incarcerated, or, by extension, her wrongful imprisonment, more broadly speaking. Rather, she conceptualizes this violence as an obstacle that had to be overcome as part of her journey in womanhood, a journey that put her in contact with Black Feminist Thought and the activism of Angela Davis. McDonald conceives of her Black transwomanhood as survival, secure in the truth that her persistence is inextricably linked to the collective struggle for all transwomen still incarcerated, no matter if they are behind bars in a prison dedicated to housing men or one intended for women. For, according to McDonald, “No prison is safe.” Echoing the writings of Angela Davis in her Chicago conference remarks, CeCe McDonald conceives of herself as a warrior, with her womanhood strengthened through activism. McDonald describes this strength as necessarily “relentless,” defined by her convictions “to push forward and to never give up this fight for anyone.” She associates her gender, having been endowed with and shaped by her hard-won strength, with the responsibilities of taking on leadership roles, speaking out, and taking initiative instead of handing this control over to men and the carceral state. The assertion of Black transwomanhood is also defined by McDonald as important in the way it serves to support the liberation struggle of all prisoners and all oppressed people more generally. Along these lines, McDonald conceptualizes her own life’s arc as part of a fight bigger than herself. This includes the assaults she suffered at the hands of both Molly Flaherty and Dean Schmitz in Minneapolis, her self-defense leading to his death, and her subsequent incarceration for second-degree manslaughter. In McDonald’s mind, the oppressions she has experienced consist of the intersecting structural oppressions of classism, racism, transphobia, and homophobia. Accordingly, her conception of womanhood parallels her purposeful joining in collective struggle against all oppressions. In the continuation of her Chicago conference speech, McDonald explains to her audience that she has been harassed, bullied, and raped, but asserts that she does not let these experiences deter her from actualizing her Black womanhood. She will continue the fight “for all of us until I shrivel up and die.” McDonald simultaneously views these oppressions as serving the capitalist system; her womanhood, then, is not only shaped by an anti-capitalist, activist opposition, but it is also intersectional in nature. McDonald remains a passionate advocate for the humanization of transwomen, and, in particular,

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transwomen of color like herself, and through her efforts amplifies calls to end their being stripped of fundamental (human) rights. Reflecting on the dehumanizing violence that CeCe McDonald has endured, and how she refuses to let it define her, I find it meaningful to consider the contribution that moral philosopher Krista K. Thomason makes to unit 1 of this volume, in her interrogation of dehumanization. With regard to the life of CeCe McDonald, I too, am complicating the notion of dehumanization, but from the standpoint of the victimized and imprisoned. Given her dehumanization as a transwoman imprisoned in a men’s prison, McDonald was not perceived as a “real” cisgender woman by some of those around her, and was seen as less than human. She was seen as a “freak,” a “beast,” a patently unnatural embodiment. In outlining dehumanization, Thomason identifies sexual violence (specifically, rape) as a complex act in a perpetrator’s attempt to dehumanize their victim (and insinuate bestiality), even as the victim’s humanlike appearance and other qualities contribute to the perpetrator’s moves to dominate and humiliate in the first place. Therefore, it becomes all the more meaningful to consider how sexual violence is designed to impact the transwoman, whose humanness is being both recognized and injured through the assault. Owing to her own experiences, McDonald appears to have deeply grasped this paradoxical mechanism of sexual violence. She is propelled by what she views as her own inalienable humanness and womanness to define her womanhood as a strength borne of overcoming obstacles. Like CeCe McDonald, Angela Davis does not believe that the prisonindustrial complex establishes or shapes womanhood. Instead, the prisonindustrial complex presents itself as normal by rendering the transwoman as its Other. To this point, Davis asks, “[I]n that context, why are trans women—and especially Black trans women who cannot easily pass—why are they considered so outside our norm?” (Davis 2016, 100). According to Davis, the normalization of the prison depends on the “bestialization” (ibid.) of the transwoman of color. This bestialization results from “race, gender, sexual non-conformity” (ibid.), allowing the prison-industrial complex to present itself as normal by casting the transwoman of color as an aberrant Other in need of being controlled. By rendering the transwoman of color as less than human and as less than woman—as a beast—and by violating her body, and subsequently her psyche and subjectivity, the prison-industrial complex does not solely establish or shape her gender but commits injuries all the same. The prison-industrial complex constructs itself as human through structures of sexual violence intended to dehumanize the incarcerated transwoman. Consequently, the prison-industrial complex paradoxi-



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cally acknowledges the transwoman of color’s humanity through the sexual violence it manifestly harbors. The gender of the transwoman is indeed formed through the strength with which she counters societal obstacles, including the prison-industrial complex. Where Davis reveals the transwoman of color as the prison-industrial complex’s Other against whom it constitutes itself, she theorizes the incarcerated transwoman of color as possessing the strength enough to potentially destroy this complex. Davis’s conception of Black transwomanhood thus parallels McDonald’s. In McDonald’s understanding of Black transwomanhood, her gender gets produced by its inherent will to keep existing, to continue dreaming its (ideal) existence into being. This existence in turn is multilayered by unrestricted educational and professional opportunities. For both feminists, then, this trans gender surpasses the mere feminine gender it embodies and represents on the body—it also includes the person’s potential, their educational and professional opportunities, their dreams, hopes, but also the causes and communities of their activism. Thus, McDonald points out in her keynote speech at the S14 Socialism Conference the critique that transwomen have not been rendered by popular media as multidimensional, with capability to live lives beyond their bodies as have lawyers, doctors, and engineers, for example. Like McDonald, Davis points to the sources of strength that define Black transwomanhood: a society that denies Black transwomen their humanity, and instead incarcerates, as well as violates them, and—one might add— exploits their labor through the prison-industrial complex. Davis highlights this dehumanization as it manifests in ignorance about the statistical fact that 18 percent of all transwomen of color have been incarcerated at one point in their lives and that 56 percent of all hate crimes are committed against LGBT populations (out of the 56 percent, 76 percent are perpetrated against transwomen of color). Moreover, Davis simultaneously reveals how the ignorance that contributes to transwomen’s dehumanization manifests in not paying any attention to these women’s plight when they are incarcerated (2012, 147): I don’t think we think about the fact that there are prisons for men and there are prisons for women. What about people who are gender-nonconforming? Because I think we’ve learned over the last period that there are more than two genders. So what happens to them? Where do they go? Where does a transgender woman get sent or a transgender man get sent or someone who doesn’t necessarily identify as male or female? Of course, the prisons rely on the old notions of biology, that biology has the answers for everything, so they inspect people’s genitals. It’s based on the genitalia that they get classified as a certain gender and therefore sent to certain prisons.

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Noting that the prison-industrial complex “serves to support the persistence of racism, but also how it has become a gendering apparatus” (ibid.), Davis highlights that it is the racism and sexism as well as transphobia of this apparatus that condones the housing of pre-operative transwomen within men’s prisons. This phobia combines with society’s ignorance about it, in a way that fuels and ignites the strength that participates in shaping transwomanhood. Mirroring McDonald’s argument, Davis reveals that such strength in the face of gender-and-sex-binarism’s dictatorial ignorance toward transgendered bodies functions as the only existing motor helping these bodies (and subjectivities) to live, thrive, and move forward. Based on McDonald’s and Davis’s insights, then, the prison-industrial complex is but one of society’s adversaries, denying transwomen and transwomen of color, their humanity. This forces these women to claim their humanity through strength and selfadvocacy, both individually and more importantly, collectively, thereby making this collective strength a signature quality of transwomanhood. TRANSFEMINIST APPROACHES TO ENDING (TRANS)GENDERED AND RACIALIZED OPPRESSION Identifying herself as a feminist fighting for equal rights for all (hence for all ciswomen and transwomen alike) in her remarks as a featured speaker and activist at the S14 Socialism Conference, CeCe McDonald argued for a widening of the category of woman. In her speech, she simultaneously destabilizes the naturalized link between female sex and feminine gender that mainstream feminisms prior to Davis’s late (trans)feminist thought and transfeminist theory have more generally relied on. McDonald achieves this widening and destabilization by relying on the insight that it is not the “fault” of transwomen that the society they live in does not attach humanity to “them,” so they “do not have to beat themselves up” about that. Transwomanhood, and particularly transwomanhood of color, relies on the realization of one’s own femininity as deeply human, as indeed being a purposeful manifestation of gendered humanness—one that has been intended to exist. This insight renders womanhood made up of the exclusive link between female sex and feminine gender—a link upon which the mainstream category of woman has long relied—as nonexistent. For womanhood can be equally made up of the male sex assigned at birth and either subsequently changed (or not) alongside one’s identification as woman/man. Thus, transwomanhood is not at fault, for it is no accident, no mistake. Transwomanhood is shaped by a strength arising to a great extent out of the need to advocate for oneself in such a society because, as McDonald puts



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it, “Nobody is going to do it for you.” This strength relies on the insight that transwomen advocating for themselves are not “the problem”—rather, society is. As this insight renders transwomanhood equally meaningful, purposeful, and normal compared to ciswomanhood, this category gets transed, that is, widened. The conceptual move that McDonald implicitly demands in her 2014 remarks is in parallel with a conceptual move that Davis makes in her 2016 book Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundation of a Movement to counter the dehumanization of transwomen: the transing, hence the widening of the category of woman. This move is essential, for it stands to reason that if McDonald had been fully comprehended as a human and as a woman, having been in a position where it was necessary to defend her life, she would not have been incarcerated in the first place. Without a doubt, her dehumanizing experience as a transwoman under assault was impacted by anti-Black racism. Therefore, Davis’s evolution toward theorizing the humanity of the transwoman of color, that is, McDonald, is inclusive of the wider community of people of color. This is a philosophical and activist position that acknowledges how in White supremacist U.S. society, people of color are vulnerabilized to the prison-industrial complex, through which carceral labor is exploited as modern-day slave labor by companies benefitting from the proliferation and privatization of prisons (Davis 2012, 144–51). An interrogation into Davis’s conceptual shift of the category of woman, through the present chapter, for example, is therefore aiming to be in service of the incarcerated transwoman of color; this provides a framework through which we can better appreciate how the transwoman of color’s multiple intersecting identities and positionalities vulnerabilize her to oppression. If she can be truly liberated from structural racism, gendering, economic inequality, and other forms of oppression contributing to her targeted incarceration, her freedom can encompass that of all those wrongfully imprisoned, as well as all those whose oppression is promulgated by the carceral state. Importantly, Davis goes as far as to demand the complete overthrow of the category of woman as we know it, including all of its feminist rewritings and extensions, to create space for women of color—a population that had been formerly excluded (Davis 2016). Previously, at the heart of the second-wave feminism of the 1970s and 1980s, the category of woman was conceived of as being for women who were largely White, middle-class, and assigned the female sex at birth. Bearing this in mind, this means that attention to the experiences of transwomen of color necessitates, according to Davis, that the category of woman be completely rewritten. This act of rewriting, in turn serves the purpose of constructing transwomen of color, whether incarcerated or not, potentially as pre-operative or post-operative

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or not, as included in this gender. This facilitates the transwoman of color’s normalization and consequently, constructs her experiences as intelligible to a broader community. These elements of Davis’s insight come from her more recent involvement with the San Francisco Bay Area–based “Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex Justice Project” (TGIJP), a social justice organization visible on multiple issues, including the murders of transgender women in the United States, for which they staged a die-in protest in 2015, as well as much needed advocacy for incarcerated trans people.11 In fact, Davis describes TGIJP as “a grassroots organization that advocates for, defends, and includes primarily trans women and trans women of color,” consisting of “women who have to fight to be included within the category ‘woman’ in a way that is dissimilar from the earlier struggles of Black women and women of color who were assigned the female gender at birth” (Davis 2016, 98). The very same structural exclusion that Angela Davis describes as impacting the lives of transwomen played out in CeCe McDonald’s case: She and her group were profiled solely for her being a transwoman of color, and for embodying Blackness and “fake” womanhood as they walked down the street where she was ultimately targeted. Minneapolis prosecutors failed to take into consideration that her transwomanhood and race were factors in her assault and subsequent self-defense. In her 2014 conference keynote speech, McDonald related her experiences in the courtroom while on trial for seconddegree murder, recalling: During the trial process I had to deal with bullshit, prosecutors who would not allow the statistics of trans women falling to hate crimes. They did not even want to acknowledge the fact that I was trans or the fact that I was Black had anything to do with the fact that I was there.

Had McDonald been understood as a (human) woman by those who participated in her arrest and prosecution, her self-defense actions might have been made more intelligible to the jury and wider public. Instead, she was prosecuted as a Black man who had killed a White man in a street fight. Equally ignored were the facts of her assailant’s swastika-tattooed body, the racial slurs he assaulted McDonald with, and his history of abusing his female partners. As opposed to McDonald, he was humanized, and portrayed as intelligible and worthy. Davis locates the problematic conceptualizations of who is included within the categories of woman and human at the latter part of the twentieth century when she writes: “And in some senses the struggle for women’s rights was ideologically defined as a struggle for White middle-class women’s rights,



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pushing out working-class and poor women, pushing out Black women, Latinas, and other women of color from the discursive field covered by the category of ‘woman’” (Davis 2016, 96). Subsequently, when “the universality of the category ‘woman,’” (ibid.) was interrogated in the ways Davis outlines in the above quote, the category of human similarly came under investigation— “especially in relation to the underlying individualism of human rights discourses” (ibid.). This called into question how the category of human could be reconceptualized to include “groups and communities” (ibid.), not just individual people who are not of European descent and instead have roots in African and Indigenous cultures (ibid.). In that newly expanding context, as Davis recalls, “The slogan ‘Women’s Rights Are Human Rights’ began to emerge in the aftermath of an amazing conference that took place in 1985 in Nairobi, Kenya” (ibid.). Attention to this history helps to illustrate how the categories of woman and human are socially constructed, often at the cost of excluding nonnormative performances of these collective identities. One of the major insights that Davis offers is that these categories were conceptualized as individualistic; that is, as only pertaining to certain White and middle-class individuals. However, transwomen of color are finally being increasingly included, following overt moves by activists and others to include women of color, poor women, and working-class women. To further and expand this inclusivity, Davis proposes that we restructure both categories (woman and human) so they pertain to groups rather than individuals. By rewriting the categories for groups, an egalitarianism among different intersectional groups might unfold, which, in turn, might facilitate access to gender categories for transwomen (and, in particular, incarcerated transwomen of color who do not pass12 for “women”). A defining feature, then, of Davis’s philosophical argument as it informs the discourse of transfeminism on both national and global levels is its focus on transwomen and its discussion of incarcerated (and potentially, non-passing) transwomen of color. Davis’s perspective urgently amplifies calls to write the categories of woman and human completely anew. CONCLUSION: ABOLISHING SYSTEMS OF OPPRESSION A key component of CeCe McDonald’s transfeminism, as manifested in her activist aims to free her incarcerated trans sisters of color (and with them, all marginalized and oppressed groups), is her insight that her struggle to

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and “common sense” can be marshalled into the same service, science’s perceived objectivity, and its apparent freedom from subjective bias, can lend a tenacious facticity to the conclusions it is made to serve. The concern of this chapter is objectivity and bias in race science, a definition of which may be the systematic study and comparison of human variation as organized into distinct demographic units, bounded by shared physical and genetic traits. There is often not much, if any, sunlight between race science and scientific racism, although the latter necessarily involves the denigration or elevation of some races in relation to others. At different points during the last few centuries, scientific racism was an important ideological organ of, for example, the Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, and the long legacy of racial discrimination in the United States and beyond. Below, drawing on new findings from his private correspondence and published works, we argue for a reinterpretation of the role of bias in the works of prominent race scientist Samuel George Morton (1799–1851). In particular, by contrasting Morton with the anti–race supremacist anatomist Friedrich Tiedemann (1781–1861), we show how bias has been consciously hidden in one of the foundational works of race science. More generally, we observe, supported by many other scholars, that scientific racism is neither dead nor dormant, but is today at work.4 Indeed, whether openly or not, many domains of contemporary science either tacitly rely on assumptions of fundamental racial difference, or misconstrue recent research in population genetics to reconstitute race as a biologically valid category, despite decades of research showing its invalidity.5 In particular, since the 1960s, a series of studies by hereditarian-minded psychologists has asserted that racial differences in IQ (Intelligence Quotient) are innate and largely ineradicable.6 Arising in the wake of such studies have been arguments that taxpayer-funded educational programs for low-income Black and Brown children should be reduced or scrapped, and that the mentally inferior should be incentivized to reproduce less.7 However, such claims have not gone unchallenged. For example in 1981, Stephen J. Gould (1941–2002), Harvard paleontologist and historian of science, published The Mismeasure of Man as an attack on the claim of racial differences in intelligence. As part of his pushback, one of Gould’s claims was that unconscious bias has been altogether rampant in studies of race and intelligence. Consequently, Gould’s Mismeasure explicated a harrowing history of bias through the figure of nineteenth-century naturalist Samuel George Morton. Morton was a craniologist; he collected and studied human skulls so as to define racial differences in brain size and intelligence. He published his results in a series of influential publications between 1839 and 1849. In Morton’s case, his work followed then-common assumptions about



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straightforward links between brain size and intelligence, and suggested the intellectual inferiority of non-White races on the grounds of smaller average skull size. This result was read in Morton’s time as a natural justification for the U.S. American institution of slavery.8 According to Gould, Morton’s various published errors—from miscalculations, to shifting criteria for including measures of some skulls and not others—tended to support Morton’s a priori position of White superiority, suggesting that Morton was unconsciously biased. Gould wrote that while conscious bias can be identified and expunged, leaving the image of scientific objectivity intact, the “prevalence of unconscious finagling, on the other hand, suggests a general conclusion about the social context of science.”9 In Gould’s hands, Morton’s case was an assault on the objectivity of nineteenth- and twentieth-century race science. Gould suggested that if bias infected research on race years ago, then bias may also reside in contemporary research on racial differences in intelligence; the remainder of his Mismeasure documents the twentieth-century reverberations of such bias. Exactly defining the impact of Gould’s work is difficult, but he was widely considered among the most influential and popular science writers of his generation. Mismeasure won many awards and was perhaps his most politically relevant and widely read book. Since then, two direct critiques of Gould’s historical methods and claims about Morton have appeared, and a bevy of defenses and further criticisms of Gould has followed in their wake.10 Due to the Morton-Gould affair, the work of Morton, a once influential but (until recently) rather obscure naturalist from the first half of the nineteenth century, has come to matter in the sociopolitical context in which Gould and those who responded to him wrote, for at least two reasons. First, the assumption of distinct human races with different innate intellectual capacities has again reared into public consciousness.11 Second, through the various critiques and responses to Gould’s examinations of Morton’s work, the stakes of the debate have been heightened; contesting Gould’s analysis of Morton, whether tout court or à la carte, has tended to generate suspicion of Gould’s other scholarship.12 While there may be good reason to contest some of Gould’s claims about Morton’s unconscious bias, this does not ipso facto validate the work of Gould’s detractors and the targets of his critique, nor does it invalidate Gould’s other research. Nonetheless, because the objectivity of Morton’s work has become a matter of debate with symbolic significance beyond the case itself, we concern ourselves in this chapter with presenting new historical findings on the objectivity of Morton’s work. In this chapter, we argue there is ample evidence that Morton was, in fact, consciously biased. We provide updated scrutiny of his private correspondence and notes, contextualizing these in conjunction with records of his life, and

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historical accounts on the context and methodology of his research. Altogether, this new assemblage of data on Morton and his nineteenth-century research undermines the image of a disinterested, impartial scientist whose methods and research were rigorously sound, even by the standards of his day. Ultimately, these findings prevent us from assenting to recent commentaries on Morton’s “having been sinned against more than sinning,”13 which attempt to salvage his image in the historical record. Furthermore, our evaluation suggests on the whole that conscious bias is as perfidious and hard to detect in science as unconscious bias, particularly when scientists actively attempt to conceal their own biases in a cloak of objectivity. In the end, the same vigilance and scrutiny that Gould suggested as antidotes to unconscious bias are probably the only route to dismantling the conscious variety, and just as necessary. In what follows, we trace a history of scientific racism, showing how evaluations of the size and other characteristics of human heads came to be associated with measures of intelligence, and with fundamental racial differences. Then, we show how Morton’s work emerged in response to that of another race scientist, Friedrich Tiedemann, who used skull measures to support theories of monogenism, racial equality, and abolition. Next, we detail aspects of Morton’s life and times which clarify the overt biases borne out in his scholarship. In so doing, we reveal his conscious bias. Finally, we reflect on the implications of our new findings on the history of race science, and the significance of Morton’s legacy. RACE ON THE BRAIN: THE RISE OF CRANIOLOGY Drawn from the writings of travelers, missionaries, and colonial officials, European racial classifications were largely the product of secondhand reports and casual observation until modern comparative anatomy’s rise at the end of the eighteenth century.14 The dissection and study of bodies and bones allowed for repeated observation and measurement, and was thus more consistent with the Enlightenment’s epistemological aims than conflicting, uncertain reports from the European colonies and beyond. In 1795, German anatomist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s (1752–1840) division of the human species into five interrelated, but cranially categorized, racial “varieties” (Americans, Caucasians, Ethiopians, Malays, and Mongolians) both instituted enduring categories and prefaced nineteenth-century studies of brain size.15 Others would share an attention to the skull as a locus of racial difference, including Dutch anatomist and artist Petrus Camper (1722–1789),16 German anatomist Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring (1755–1830),17 and French naturalist Georges Cuvier (1769–1832). Cuvier’s 1817 report on a



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dissection of the “Venus Hottentot” Sara Baartman in Paris asserted her small brain and resemblance to a monkey, undergirding his claim of the inferiority of Africans and their incapacity for civilization. For Cuvier, there proved “no exception to this cruel law which seems to have condemned to eternal inferiority the races with cramped and compressed skulls.”18 The link between brain size and intelligence was a common supposition of nineteenth-century naturalists, as it continued a long-inherited legacy in Western thought further bolstered by the practice of phrenology (see also chapter 2 by Wright in this volume, which describes the brain-centric legacies of anatomy before Western thought regarded racial difference as a problem). Phrenology was the attempt, begun by German doctor Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828) in the late eighteenth century, to determine character and intelligence from the brain’s shape and size, as reflected through the skull’s exterior.19 Phrenological principles were afforded apparency by cases of smallbrained “idiots” and large-headed “geniuses” documented by physicians through plaster casts, paintings, and sustained phrenological observation.20 Although phrenology was used to serve both reform and discrimination, its popularity into the mid-nineteenth century across Europe and the United States entrenched an increasingly anatomized view of racial difference.21 Through the anatomized body, the “capacity for civilization” and racial hierarchy were made legible, as was the theorized evolution of racial difference. Initially, a belief in biblical chronology and the divine creation of all life was common among European naturalists. Many tended to attribute racial differences to the effects of lifestyles and environments emerging after Noah’s flood, but accepted the fundamental unity of the human species. Their view, called monogenism, was contested by polygenism, which held that human races did not, in fact, share common ancestry. For polygenists, racial differences were heritable, fixed, static, and innate. Polygenism was first posited by French philosopher Voltaire (1694–1778) and Scottish historian Lord Kames (1696–1782) and began to take root in the late eighteenth century. By the mid-nineteenth century, an increasing emphasis on the collection of bodies and their measurement had made the polygenist view one of scientific racism. Indeed, both monogenists and polygenists used skull measurements to support their opposing racial theories. OF TWO MINDS: CRANIOLOGY AND THE IDEOLOGIES OF TIEDEMANN AND MORTON In 1836, German anatomist and physiologist Friedrich Tiedemann (1781– 1861),22 conducted a large, systematic comparison of the skulls and brains

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of orangutans and humans from Blumenbach’s five races, with particular attention to the comparison of the “Aethiopian” (or “Negro”) race and that of the European.23 For his studies, Tiedemann filled skulls with millet, weighed them, then subtracted from that the skulls’ tare weights. He concluded that his measurements of 489 human skulls, far more than those ever measured and compared before, showed no significant differences between Africans and Europeans. Refuting claims of African animality, he declared Africans no closer to the orangutan than Europeans. He opened his essay, submitted in English to the Royal Society, by suggesting that the work had “great importance in the natural history, anatomy, and physiology of Man; interesting also in a political and legislative point of view.”24 With the first large, systematic study of brain size in different “races,” Tiedemann forwarded an argument for equality on the basis of cranial form. After publishing his essay, Tiedemann received no retort with a comparable set of skull measurements until three years later in 1839, when Morton published the first of his two major studies of skulls, entitled Crania Americana.25 The new publication revealed that Morton had attempted a comparative study similar to Tiedemann’s; Morton used Blumenbach’s racial classification and a measure of the volume of seed that would fit into a skull’s braincase. However, rather than travel across Europe to the various anatomical collections to measure a wide assortment of crania, as Tiedemann did, Morton leveraged his central position as an administrator in Philadelphia’s budding Academy of Natural Sciences (ANSP) to acquire the “skulls of all nations”26 sent to him by explorers, military and colonial officials, and other naturalists, and through trade with other skull collectors. Thereby, Morton amassed one of the world’s largest cranial collections, the “American Golgotha,”27 that would eventually grow to encompass some nine hundred human skulls before his death.28 Importantly, Morton’s conclusions starkly contrasted with Tiedemann’s. Morton’s measurements of 256 skulls showed that Caucasians had larger brains than all other races, followed by Mongolians, Malay, Americans, and Negroes, respectively. However, Morton refrained from spelling out the implications of his 1839 findings. Instead, it was the Scottish phrenologist George Combe (1788–1858) who wrote a “phrenological appendix” to Morton’s Crania Americana, and stated, “The aggregate natural mental power (animal, moral, and intellectual) of the individuals composing any nation, will (other conditions being equal) be great or small in proportion to the size of their brains.”29 At the time, Tiedemann was among the most celebrated anatomists in Europe,30 and he was also going blind.31 Though Tiedemann never responded in print to Morton’s work, he surely knew of it; his anatomist son-in-law, Theodor Ludwig Bischoff (1807–1882), eventually published a critical review of



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Crania Americana. It is also certain that Tiedemann, an avowed monogenist and abolitionist, ardently disagreed with Morton. Remarkably, however, even as Tiedemann and Morton both produced similar results regarding race and brain size, it was their interpretations which differed.32 As his Crania Americana shows, Morton averaged his measurements for each racial category and ranked them accordingly, despite great overlap in the ranges for these groupings, upon which he did not comment. Tiedemann’s measurements also demonstrated overlap across racial categories. However, for Tiedemann this was evidence of the fundamental unity of humanity, and as a result, he did not average the skull volumes of races. Calculating averages of Tiedemann’s data produces a table which matches Morton’s rankings (see Morton’s 1839 table of measurements in Figure 4.1 and one of Tiedemann’s 1836 tables in Figure 4.2). Together, their works illustrate how their prior assumptions about racial difference structured their respective methods of data presentation and interpretation. Although Morton’s work is a definite response to Tiedemann’s (see below), Morton only publicly mentioned Tiedemann in three brief passages about digestion and circulation in his 1849 textbook on human anatomy.33 In fact, only in a posthumously published manuscript penned by Morton circa 1850 does he mention Tiedemann’s craniological research. Morton noted that “Prof. Tiedemann, of Heidelberg, a learned and accomplished anatomist” had investigated the difference in brain size between men and women.34 Morton then faulted Tiedemann’s writings on racial differences for flawed measurement, despite admitting results “of great value.”35

Figure 4.1.  Morton’s table of cranial capacities from his Crania Americana (1839, 260). Note that Morton only reported individual measurements for “Americans” in his 1839 work. For every other racial group, he reported only the sample size, average, and range.

Figure 4.2.  Tiedemann’s table of “Æthiopian” cranial capacities from his article “On the Brain of the Negro, Compared with That of the European and the Orang-Outang” (1836, 505). This is one of five such tables in his 1836 article, with each table reporting measurements pertaining to racial groups originally identified in Blumenbach’s classification. Note that Tiedemann measured skulls by the weight (of millet)—rather than the volume—that could be contained in the braincase. For all “races” but the “American,” Tiedemann’s 1836 sample was larger than Morton’s 1839 sample (see Figure 4.1).



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MORTON’S CRYPTIC MOTIVATIONS Since, unlike Tiedemann, Morton did not publish his opinions on the political significance of the scientific questions he was pursuing, attention to the archive of his private correspondence and other records gives important context to Morton’s motivations. Whereas Tiedemann was obviously interested in providing a craniological grounding for racial equality, and is explicit in his views, Morton is, by contrast, cryptic. Indeed, Morton seems to have held the political question of slavery as imponderable. One of the few references to slavery in his private writings, a journal of his visit to Barbados in 1834, reveals that while he thought gradual emancipation might be best, “The subject of slavery is trite and exhausted, nor if the wisdom of Solomon were to speak now would it avail any thing (sic) . . .”36 In both public and private writings, Morton appears to have stayed carefully aloof of the debate as to whether slavery was a brutal crime against Africans, or a permissible way to treat incapable inferiors. Perhaps because he did not wear especially politically cumbersome convictions on his sleeve, Morton was professionally associated with colleagues on both sides of the issue. In fact, in his earlier years, many of his teachers and friends were outspoken abolitionists, such as physician Joseph Parrish (1799–1840).37 After receiving a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1820,38 Morton sailed to Clonmel, Ireland, to visit his uncle James Morton, a successful merchant. James was so impressed by his nephew that he enrolled him as a medical student at the University of Edinburgh.39 At that time, American universities were viewed as inferior institutions, and a European diploma would do more to help Morton build a practice.40 While at Edinburgh, Morton befriended Thomas Hodgkin (1798–1866), a devout English Quaker, who at age twenty-one wrote an essay criticizing European abuses of Native Americans.41 Later, Morton traveled with Hodgkin to Paris for advanced training in anatomy.42 Though former classmate Hodgkin and Morton remained friends in the decade following Edinburgh, their letters show sentiments straining as priorities diverged.43 Eventually, in 1836, Hodgkin retired from medicine to focus on philanthropy, founding the Indigenous Protection Society and traveling around the world to relieve poverty and racial oppression.44 This was around the same time Morton was devising his first craniological treatise. Upon earning his M.D. from Edinburgh, Morton returned to Philadelphia, where he established a successful medical practice, taught classes in anatomy, and became a noted naturalist and active member of the Academy of Natural Sciences (ANSP). At the ANSP, Morton maintained close relationships with steadfast abolitionists and vocal anti–race supremacists.45 Morton knew John Speakman (1783–1854), a Quaker apothecary who helped found the ANSP

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in 1812, and was the “zealously religious” son of a fervently abolitionist father who “refused to use any article known to be a product made with slave labor.”46 Further, William Maclure (1763–1840), the ANSP’s first president, wrote that slavery was a “disgrace to the civilization and knowledge of the day” which arose from “prejudices against color, arising from the false supposition of superiority being in the skin.”47 Interestingly, Maclure donated the funds Morton used to hire lithographer John Collins (1814–1902) to illustrate Crania Americana.48 Collins was himself an activist Quaker (and a cousin of Morton’s wife, Rebecca) who published antislavery poetry.49 In ensuing years, as his craniological work took off, Morton also maintained close relationships with some of America’s most outspoken race supremacists, including anatomist Charles Caldwell (1772–1853), whose Thoughts on the Original Unity of the Human Race (1830) has been described as “the first explicitly polygenist book written in English.”50 Morton was also a friend and colleague of Josiah Clark Nott (1804–1873), a Paris-trained surgeon and Alabama plantation owner. A vocal White supremacist, Nott gained notoriety as a popular lecturer on what he called “niggerology,” arguing that “the negro (sic) attains his greatest perfection, physical and moral, and his greatest longevity, in a state of slavery.”51 After Morton’s death, Nott compiled The Types of Mankind, arguably the most extensive statement of polygenism and pre-Darwinian scientific racism. The book’s dedication was “To the Memory of Morton” and included posthumous publication of Morton’s unfinished manuscripts, given to Nott by Morton’s widow. Nott’s coauthor was another of Morton’s virulently race supremacist colleagues, Egyptologist George Gliddon (1809–1857). In the 1840s, Morton had also befriended Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), the Swiss-born naturalist and influential Harvard professor of natural history, who had shifted from an egalitarian position to one of polygenism and White superiority after moving from Europe to the United States.52 This evidence of Morton’s professional relations suggests his ambivalence on slavery as a moral and political issue, although nowhere in his writing does Morton record a convinced opinion on the institution of slavery. His associates, however, were aware of the relevance of his studies. In particular, Gliddon, the Egyptologist, attempted to personally deliver a copy of Morton’s works to the pro-slavery South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun.53 While Morton’s lack of an expressed opinion on slavery might provide the basis for an inference of impartiality, his close associations late in life with polygenist slaveholders suggest either a thinly veiled approval of the institution, or at least a willingness to hold his nose in the service of making a name for himself. Other archival evidence provides clear documentation of



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Morton’s conscious dissembling with his data, suggesting that whatever he was, Morton was not impartial. MORTON’S CONSCIOUS BIAS In order to study the “skulls of all nations,” Morton relied on a network of global connections.54 By having doctors and military men collect Native American skulls from battlefields and graveyards in the Americas, Morton could trade these for difficult-to-acquire crania from collectors in Europe.55 For example, in 1848, Morton sent Comanche and Peruvian skulls to Swedish craniologist Anders Retzius (1796–1860) in exchange for those of Finns and Scandinavians.56 The scope and opportunistic nature of Morton’s collecting practices are suggested in his 1836 letter to U.S. Army surgeon Thomas Lawson, M.D., of Fort Mitchell, Alabama. Morton notes that his collection includes only sixty-three skulls of “American tribes,” of which “but twenty-three of these are North Americans.”57 This letter was not handwritten, but was printed on a press, with a blank space for the name of the addressee, indicating that Morton sent out many reproduced copies of this same form letter. Through this particular correspondence, Morton was likely attempting to acquire skulls of the Creek Nation, because Fort Mitchell was the established U.S. Army garrison under use during the Second Creek War, or Creek Alabama Uprising, of 1836–1837.58 As Morton sent the letter about a month and a half after the conflict’s start, he likely knew that recently deceased Creek bodies would be available. Lawson, who would later become Surgeon General under U.S. President Andrew Jackson, never sent any crania, but Morton eventually acquired the skulls of Creek people through other contacts.59 All in all, Morton’s skull-collecting, even if opportunistic, was organized by certain priorities. For his first book, Crania Americana, Morton was in need of Native American crania, as his printed correspondence suggests. After Crania Americana was released, however, Morton evidently became very concerned with acquiring “native” skulls from the African continent. To satisfy this priority, circa 1840 some fifty skulls of African-born enslaved were shipped to Morton by one Don José Rodriguez Cisneros (fl. eighteenth century), a physician of Havana, Cuba, whom Morton may have come to know through other naturalists or through a trip that he undertook to the Caribbean in 1834. In a July 1840 letter to Morton, Cisneros explained that what he had sent Morton were the skulls of enslaved “bozales negros”60 whose skeletons had been dug up at the Vedado Farm on the outskirts of Havana. These enslaved Africans had likely died following a

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cholera epidemic that swept through the region in the early 1830s (adding to the hardship of their enslavement).61 Enclosed with the skulls he sent, Cisneros also included a letter thanking Morton for the copy of Crania Americana sent to him, remarking: “I received your appreciated letter in which you charge[d] me to procure 50 rare African skulls . . .”62 Morton’s desire for these skulls is also discussed in an earlier May 1840 letter he wrote to George Combe. In this letter, Morton emphasized that he was in the process of collecting: At least 50 skulls of Native Africans (sic). The results obtained from such sources will of course be beyond cavil, and will compete fairly with Prof. Tiedemann’s experiments.63

This passage from his correspondence demonstrates that Morton intentionally took measures to collect the skulls of “native born” Africans with the specific intent of “competing with” Tiedemann. What might Morton have meant in writing that he wanted to “compete fairly” with Tiedemann’s research? The claims extending from Tiedemann’s research were strengthened by the fact that Tiedemann (1836) had actually measured more crania than Morton had in 1839. Tiedemann’s work had also included the skulls of continental Africans. By contrast, Morton had studied only a few such Africans—nine of the twenty-nine Africans in his sample. Why the need for the skulls of continental Africans? Tiedemann’s 1836 claims refuted findings of smaller African brain size, a research result Tiedemann explained as relating to the sampling of “Negro” skulls impacted by the condition of enslavement: “[The] miserable remains of an enslaved people, bodily and spiritually degraded and lowered by ill treatment.”64 Influenced by thencommon theories that the manner of one’s life and environment had profound anatomical consequences, Tiedemann claimed that only the skulls of free, “native” Africans could assist in the investigation of sound anatomical research. Morton’s intention to compete with his German monogenist rival led him not only to acquire the bozales to add to his collection, but to omit a major detail about their provenance in print. In his next major work, Crania Aegyptiaca (1844), after reporting on the small size of “Negroids” in Ancient Egypt as proof of African inferiority throughout all of known history, Morton inserts a footnote: “I have in my possession seventy-nine crania of Negroes born in Africa . . .” He thanks doctors in Liberia for sending the skulls, and “especially” thanks the Havana-based Cisneros, before noting that the recently acquired skulls have “eighty-five cubic inches for the average size of the brain . . .” and the “smallest but sixty-five.” Morton never mentions that the skulls sent by Cisneros (the large majority of his “Native Africa” mea-



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surements in Crania Aegyptiaca) were those of the enslaved—lest he give Tiedemann’s supporters a grounds to dismiss this research. With that very footnote, Morton was strategically addressing Tiedemann’s call for the study of non-enslaved Africans, while serving his own goal to prove their cranial—and thereby mental—inferiority. As mentioned above, nowhere in Morton’s published writings (except in posthumously published manuscripts) does he address Tiedemann’s craniology. Even so, Morton’s private correspondence is clear about his intention to compete with Tiedemann’s claims describing evidence of racial equality, as in: “The principal result of my researches on the brain of the Negro, is, that neither anatomy nor physiology can justify our placing them beneath the Europeans in a moral or intellectual point of view.” Thus, behind Morton’s superficial empiricism and objectivity was the methodical, conscious construction of a scientific apology for the slave trade. This bias led Morton to actively mislead in publication about the sources of his data. CONCLUSION: THE CLOAKED INTENTIONS AND CONSCIOUS BIAS OF SAMUEL GEORGE MORTON Morton spends several paragraphs in his publications detailing his methods of measurement, assuring readers of their accuracy, and suggesting the toil that he and his assistant undertook in checking their own analysis.65 Although Morton’s craniological work is, in volume, much more a labor of textual description and visual representation than it is of measurement, his measures and interpretations of skull size have long been at the center of debate about the value of his research. While opinions remain mixed on the objectivity of his measurements of cranial volume, what seems apparent from closer examination of Morton’s correspondence and the political and scientific context in which he worked is that Morton was not an impartial, unbiased scientist. Even if his data of cranial capacity are accurate, the manner in which he presented his data was biased by his desire to refute the abolitionist arguments of Tiedemann, his peer and principal rival. The details we have presented in this chapter, which are drawn from Morton’s personal papers, reveal a man mindfully curating which evidence he would present and how he would present it. Also revealing is Morton’s choice to withdraw from overt political statements that competed with the apparent objectivity of his claims, as well as his attempt to obfuscate the sources of his “specimens.” Contextualizing Morton within the contemporary nineteenthcentury debate on slavery in the United States and other slaveholding territories shows his work to be deeply invested in that debate, despite the apparent

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disinterested stance of his writings on the question. Crucially, Morton’s position significantly diverged from that of Tiedemann, who completed his seminal article by commending Great Britain on its abolition of the slave trade, declaring, “The chain which bound Africa to the dust, and prevented the success of every effort to raise her, is broken.”66 We can therefore conclude that Morton’s bias was conscious and purposefully intended. This may have been even more pernicious than the unconscious bias of which he has been accused by Gould, particularly as he evidently attempted to obscure his bias from scrutiny. It is also significant that craniology as a basis for arguments about racial difference outlived Morton’s preeminence. In the aftermath of the American Civil War and the rise of Darwin’s (1859) theory of evolution by natural selection, little more than two decades following the publication of Crania Americana, Morton’s work began to suffer diminished political and scientific reception. Still, scientific apologies for racial hierarchy and discrimination on the basis of race lingered. As a result, modern fixations on embodied racial difference remain haunted by the legacies of foundational scientific racists like Morton, who exploited the bodies of the dead to entrench justifications for racial oppression. Also important is how Morton’s views on race were carefully cloaked in his writings. However, Morton’s veiled intentions only tell part of the story. That abolitionists and egalitarians found no succor in his works on race and craniology, although pro-slavery advocates did, is telling. In subsequent years, Nott, Gliddon, and Agassiz, among others, would go on to elaborate on Morton’s craniological corpus to fashion increasingly baroque and dogmatic arguments about the fundamental inferiority of non-Whites and their threat as social deviants and “polluters” of the White race.67 Revisiting the history of Morton’s labors, as we have done in this chapter, having combed through a unique, multilingual assemblage of historical texts, provides a careful examination of his dour legacy for lessons on the impacts and dangers of conscious, but discreetly hidden, bias in science. NOTES 1.  Patterson, “Memoir of the Life and Scientific Labors of Samuel George Morton,” in Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, lvii. 2. Darwin, Letter to Charles Lyell. 3. Proctor, Racial Hygiene, 2. 4. Roberts, Fatal Invention; Marks, Is Science Racist? 5.  Yudell et al., “Taking Race Out of Human Genetics,” 564–65; Reardon, Race to the Finish.



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Crania Americana. It is also certain that Tiedemann, an avowed monogenist and abolitionist, ardently disagreed with Morton. Remarkably, however, even as Tiedemann and Morton both produced similar results regarding race and brain size, it was their interpretations which differed.32 As his Crania Americana shows, Morton averaged his measurements for each racial category and ranked them accordingly, despite great overlap in the ranges for these groupings, upon which he did not comment. Tiedemann’s measurements also demonstrated overlap across racial categories. However, for Tiedemann this was evidence of the fundamental unity of humanity, and as a result, he did not average the skull volumes of races. Calculating averages of Tiedemann’s data produces a table which matches Morton’s rankings (see Morton’s 1839 table of measurements in Figure 4.1 and one of Tiedemann’s 1836 tables in Figure 4.2). Together, their works illustrate how their prior assumptions about racial difference structured their respective methods of data presentation and interpretation. Although Morton’s work is a definite response to Tiedemann’s (see below), Morton only publicly mentioned Tiedemann in three brief passages about digestion and circulation in his 1849 textbook on human anatomy.33 In fact, only in a posthumously published manuscript penned by Morton circa 1850 does he mention Tiedemann’s craniological research. Morton noted that “Prof. Tiedemann, of Heidelberg, a learned and accomplished anatomist” had investigated the difference in brain size between men and women.34 Morton then faulted Tiedemann’s writings on racial differences for flawed measurement, despite admitting results “of great value.”35

Figure 4.1.  Morton’s table of cranial capacities from his Crania Americana (1839, 260). Note that Morton only reported individual measurements for “Americans” in his 1839 work. For every other racial group, he reported only the sample size, average, and range.

Figure 4.2.  Tiedemann’s table of “Æthiopian” cranial capacities from his article “On the Brain of the Negro, Compared with That of the European and the Orang-Outang” (1836, 505). This is one of five such tables in his 1836 article, with each table reporting measurements pertaining to racial groups originally identified in Blumenbach’s classification. Note that Tiedemann measured skulls by the weight (of millet)—rather than the volume—that could be contained in the braincase. For all “races” but the “American,” Tiedemann’s 1836 sample was larger than Morton’s 1839 sample (see Figure 4.1).



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MORTON’S CRYPTIC MOTIVATIONS Since, unlike Tiedemann, Morton did not publish his opinions on the political significance of the scientific questions he was pursuing, attention to the archive of his private correspondence and other records gives important context to Morton’s motivations. Whereas Tiedemann was obviously interested in providing a craniological grounding for racial equality, and is explicit in his views, Morton is, by contrast, cryptic. Indeed, Morton seems to have held the political question of slavery as imponderable. One of the few references to slavery in his private writings, a journal of his visit to Barbados in 1834, reveals that while he thought gradual emancipation might be best, “The subject of slavery is trite and exhausted, nor if the wisdom of Solomon were to speak now would it avail any thing (sic) . . .”36 In both public and private writings, Morton appears to have stayed carefully aloof of the debate as to whether slavery was a brutal crime against Africans, or a permissible way to treat incapable inferiors. Perhaps because he did not wear especially politically cumbersome convictions on his sleeve, Morton was professionally associated with colleagues on both sides of the issue. In fact, in his earlier years, many of his teachers and friends were outspoken abolitionists, such as physician Joseph Parrish (1799–1840).37 After receiving a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1820,38 Morton sailed to Clonmel, Ireland, to visit his uncle James Morton, a successful merchant. James was so impressed by his nephew that he enrolled him as a medical student at the University of Edinburgh.39 At that time, American universities were viewed as inferior institutions, and a European diploma would do more to help Morton build a practice.40 While at Edinburgh, Morton befriended Thomas Hodgkin (1798–1866), a devout English Quaker, who at age twenty-one wrote an essay criticizing European abuses of Native Americans.41 Later, Morton traveled with Hodgkin to Paris for advanced training in anatomy.42 Though former classmate Hodgkin and Morton remained friends in the decade following Edinburgh, their letters show sentiments straining as priorities diverged.43 Eventually, in 1836, Hodgkin retired from medicine to focus on philanthropy, founding the Indigenous Protection Society and traveling around the world to relieve poverty and racial oppression.44 This was around the same time Morton was devising his first craniological treatise. Upon earning his M.D. from Edinburgh, Morton returned to Philadelphia, where he established a successful medical practice, taught classes in anatomy, and became a noted naturalist and active member of the Academy of Natural Sciences (ANSP). At the ANSP, Morton maintained close relationships with steadfast abolitionists and vocal anti–race supremacists.45 Morton knew John Speakman (1783–1854), a Quaker apothecary who helped found the ANSP

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in 1812, and was the “zealously religious” son of a fervently abolitionist father who “refused to use any article known to be a product made with slave labor.”46 Further, William Maclure (1763–1840), the ANSP’s first president, wrote that slavery was a “disgrace to the civilization and knowledge of the day” which arose from “prejudices against color, arising from the false supposition of superiority being in the skin.”47 Interestingly, Maclure donated the funds Morton used to hire lithographer John Collins (1814–1902) to illustrate Crania Americana.48 Collins was himself an activist Quaker (and a cousin of Morton’s wife, Rebecca) who published antislavery poetry.49 In ensuing years, as his craniological work took off, Morton also maintained close relationships with some of America’s most outspoken race supremacists, including anatomist Charles Caldwell (1772–1853), whose Thoughts on the Original Unity of the Human Race (1830) has been described as “the first explicitly polygenist book written in English.”50 Morton was also a friend and colleague of Josiah Clark Nott (1804–1873), a Paris-trained surgeon and Alabama plantation owner. A vocal White supremacist, Nott gained notoriety as a popular lecturer on what he called “niggerology,” arguing that “the negro (sic) attains his greatest perfection, physical and moral, and his greatest longevity, in a state of slavery.”51 After Morton’s death, Nott compiled The Types of Mankind, arguably the most extensive statement of polygenism and pre-Darwinian scientific racism. The book’s dedication was “To the Memory of Morton” and included posthumous publication of Morton’s unfinished manuscripts, given to Nott by Morton’s widow. Nott’s coauthor was another of Morton’s virulently race supremacist colleagues, Egyptologist George Gliddon (1809–1857). Late in life, Morton had also befriended Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), the Swiss-born naturalist and influential Harvard professor of natural history, who had shifted from an egalitarian position to one of polygenism and White superiority after moving from Europe to the United States.52 This evidence of Morton’s professional relations suggests his ambivalence on slavery as a moral and political issue, although nowhere in his writing does Morton record a convinced opinion on the institution of slavery. His associates, however, were aware of the relevance of his studies. In particular, Gliddon, the Egyptologist, attempted to personally deliver a copy of Morton’s works to the pro-slavery South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun.53 While Morton’s lack of an expressed opinion on slavery might provide the basis for an inference of impartiality, his close associations late in life with polygenist slaveholders suggest either a thinly veiled approval of the institution, or at least a willingness to hold his nose in the service of making a name for himself. Other archival evidence provides clear documentation of



Bias, Brains, and Skulls 87

Morton’s conscious dissembling with his data, suggesting that whatever he was, Morton was not impartial. MORTON’S CONSCIOUS BIAS In order to study the “skulls of all nations,” Morton relied on a network of global connections.54 By having doctors and military men collect Native American skulls from battlefields and graveyards in the Americas, Morton could trade these for difficult-to-acquire crania from collectors in Europe.55 For example, in 1848, Morton sent Comanche and Peruvian skulls to Swedish craniologist Anders Retzius (1796–1860) in exchange for those of Finns and Scandinavians.56 The scope and opportunistic nature of Morton’s collecting practices are suggested in his 1836 letter to U.S. Army surgeon Thomas Lawson, M.D., of Fort Mitchell, Alabama. Morton notes that his collection includes only sixty-three skulls of “American tribes,” of which “but twenty-three of these are North Americans.”57 This letter was not handwritten, but was printed on a press, with a blank space for the name of the addressee, indicating that Morton sent out many reproduced copies of this same form letter. Through this particular correspondence, Morton was likely attempting to acquire skulls of the Creek Nation, because Fort Mitchell was the established U.S. Army garrison under use during the Second Creek War, or Creek Alabama Uprising, of 1836–1837.58 As Morton sent the letter about a month and a half after the conflict’s start, he likely knew that recently deceased Creek bodies would be available. Lawson, who would later become Surgeon General under U.S. President Andrew Jackson, never sent any crania, but Morton eventually acquired the skulls of Creek people through other contacts.59 All in all, Morton’s skull-collecting, even if opportunistic, was organized by certain priorities. For his first book, Crania Americana, Morton was in need of Native American crania, as his printed correspondence suggests. After Crania Americana was released, however, Morton evidently became very concerned with acquiring “native” skulls from the African continent. To satisfy this priority, circa 1840 some fifty skulls of African-born enslaved were shipped to Morton by one Don José Rodriguez Cisneros (fl. eighteenth century), a physician of Havana, Cuba, whom Morton may have come to know through other naturalists or through a trip that he undertook to the Caribbean in 1834. In a July 1840 letter to Morton, Cisneros explained that what he had sent Morton were the skulls of enslaved “bozales negros”60 whose skeletons had been dug up at the Vedando Farm on the outskirts of Havana. These enslaved Africans had likely died following a

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cholera epidemic that swept through the region in the early 1830s (adding to the hardship of their enslavement).61 Enclosed with the skulls he sent, Cisneros also included a letter thanking Morton for the copy of Crania Americana sent to him, remarking: “I received your appreciated letter in which you charge[d] me to procure 50 rare African skulls . . .”62 Morton’s desire for these skulls is also discussed in an earlier May 1840 letter he wrote to George Combe. In this letter, Morton emphasized that he was in the process of collecting: At least 50 skulls of Native Africans (sic). The results obtained from such sources will of course be beyond cavil, and will compete fairly with Prof. Tiedemann’s experiments.63

This passage from his correspondence demonstrates that Morton intentionally took measures to collect the skulls of “native born” Africans with the specific intent of “competing with” Tiedemann. What might Morton have meant in writing that he wanted to “compete fairly” with Tiedemann’s research? The claims extending from Tiedemann’s research were strengthened by the fact that Tiedemann (1836) had actually measured more crania than Morton had in 1839. Tiedemann’s work had also included the skulls of continental Africans. By contrast, Morton had studied only a few such Africans—nine of the twenty-nine Africans in his sample. Why the need for the skulls of continental Africans? Tiedemann’s 1836 claims refuted findings of smaller African brain size, a research result Tiedemann explained as relating to the sampling of “Negro” skulls impacted by the condition of enslavement: “[The] miserable remains of an enslaved people, bodily and spiritually degraded and lowered by ill treatment.”64 Influenced by thencommon theories that the manner of one’s life and environment had profound anatomical consequences, Tiedemann claimed that only the skulls of free, “native” Africans could assist in the investigation of sound anatomical research. Morton’s intention to compete with his German monogenist rival led him not only to acquire the bozales to add to his collection, but to omit a major detail about their provenance in print. In his next major work, Crania Aegyptiaca (1844), after reporting on the small size of “Negroids” in Ancient Egypt as proof of African inferiority throughout all of known history, Morton inserts a footnote: “I have in my possession seventy-nine crania of Negroes born in Africa . . .” He thanks doctors in Liberia for sending the skulls, and “especially” thanks the Havana-based Cisneros, before noting that the recently acquired skulls have “eighty-five cubic inches for the average size of the brain . . .” and the “smallest but sixty-five.” Morton never mentions that the skulls sent by Cisneros (the large majority of his “Native Africa” mea-



Bias, Brains, and Skulls 89

surements in Crania Aegyptiaca) were those of the enslaved—lest he give Tiedemann’s supporters a grounds to dismiss this research. With that very footnote, Morton was strategically addressing Tiedemann’s call for the study of non-enslaved Africans, while serving his own goal to prove their cranial—and thereby mental—inferiority. As mentioned above, nowhere in Morton’s published writings (except in posthumously published manuscripts) does he address Tiedemann’s craniology. Even so, Morton’s private correspondence is clear about his intention to compete with Tiedemann’s claims describing evidence of racial equality, as in: “The principal result of my researches on the brain of the Negro, is, that neither anatomy nor physiology can justify our placing them beneath the Europeans in a moral or intellectual point of view.” Thus, behind Morton’s superficial empiricism and objectivity was the methodical, conscious construction of a scientific apology for the slave trade. This bias led Morton to actively mislead his peers about the sources of his data. CONCLUSION: THE CLOAKED INTENTIONS AND CONSCIOUS BIAS OF SAMUEL GEORGE MORTON Morton spends several paragraphs in his publications detailing his methods of measurement, assuring readers of their accuracy, and suggesting the toil that he and his assistant undertook in checking their own analysis.65 Although Morton’s craniological work is, in volume, much more a labor of textual description and visual representation than it is of measurement, his measures and interpretations of skull size have long been at the center of debate about the value of his research. While opinions remain mixed on the objectivity of his measurements of cranial volume, what seems apparent from closer examination of Morton’s correspondence and the political and scientific context in which he worked is that Morton was not an impartial, unbiased scientist. Even if his data of cranial capacity are accurate, the manner in which he presented his data was biased by his desire to refute the abolitionist arguments of Tiedemann, his peer and principal rival. The details we have presented in this chapter, which are drawn from Morton’s personal papers, reveal a man mindfully curating which evidence he would present and how he would present it. Also revealing is Morton’s choice to withdraw from overt political statements that competed with the apparent objectivity of his claims, as well as his attempt to obfuscate the sources of his “specimens.” Contextualizing Morton within the contemporary nineteenthcentury debate on slavery in the United States and other slaveholding territories shows his work to be deeply invested in that debate, despite the apparent

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disinterested stance of his writings on the question. Crucially, Morton’s position significantly diverged from that of Tiedemann, who completed his seminal article by commending Great Britain on its abolition of the slave trade, declaring, “The chain which bound Africa to the dust, and prevented the success of every effort to raise her, is broken.”66 We can therefore conclude that Morton’s bias was conscious and purposefully intended. This may have been even more pernicious than the unconscious bias of which he has been accused by Gould, particularly as he evidently attempted to obscure his bias from scrutiny. It is also significant that craniology as a basis for arguments about racial difference outlived Morton’s preeminence. Little more than two decades after Morton’s 1839 Crania Americana, his work already began to suffer diminished political and scientific reception, given the escalations leading to the American Civil War, and the increased prominence of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection (1858), particularly in the United States. Still, scientific apologies for racial hierarchy and discrimination on the basis of race lingered. As a result, modern fixations on embodied racial difference remain haunted by the legacies of foundational scientific racists like Morton, who exploited the bodies of the dead to entrench justifications for racial oppression. Also important is how Morton’s views on race were carefully cloaked in his writings. However, Morton’s veiled intentions only tell part of the story. That abolitionists and egalitarians found no succor in his works on race and craniology, although pro-slavery advocates did, is telling. In subsequent years, Nott, Gliddon, and Agassiz, among others, would go on to elaborate on Morton’s craniological corpus to fashion increasingly baroque and dogmatic arguments about the fundamental inferiority of non-Whites and their threat as social deviants and “polluters” of the White race.67 Revisiting the history of Morton’s labors, as we have done in this chapter, having combed through a unique, multilingual assemblage of historical texts, provides a careful examination of his dour legacy for lessons on the impacts and dangers of conscious, but discreetly hidden, bias in science. NOTES 1.  Patterson, “Memoir of the Life and Scientific Labors of Samuel George Morton,” in Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, lvii. 2. Darwin, Letter to Charles Lyell. 3. Proctor, Racial Hygiene, 2. 4. Roberts, Fatal Invention; Marks, Is Science Racist? 5.  Yudell et al., “Taking Race Out of Human Genetics,” 564–65; Reardon, Race to the Finish.



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 6. Jensen, Bias in Mental Testing; Herrnstein and Murray, The Bell Curve; Rushton, Race, Evolution, and Behavior; Wade, A Troublesome Inheritance; Sesardić, Making Sense of Heritability; Gottfredson, “Egalitarian Fiction and Collective Fraud,” 53–59.   7.  Jensen, “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Achievement?,” 1–123; Shockley, “Dysgenics, Geneticity, Raceology,” 297–307; Richwine, “IQ and Immigration Policy.”  8. Morton, Crania Aegyptiaca, 66–67.   9.  Gould, “Morton’s Ranking of Races by Cranial Capacity,” 505. 10.  Michael, “A New Look at Morton’s Craniological Research,” 349–54; Lewis et al., “The Mismeasure of Science”; Weisberg, “Remeasuring Man,” 166–78; Kaplan et al., “Gould on Morton, Redux,” 22–31; Weisberg and Paul, “Morton, Gould, and Bias”; Nature, “Mismeasure for Mismeasure,” 419; Wade, “Scientists Measure the Accuracy of a Racism Claim”; Keim, “The Mismeasures of Stephen Jay Gould.” 11.  Evans, “The Unwelcome Revival of ‘Race Science.’” 12.  Gottfredson, “Resolute Ignorance on Race and Rushton”; Bouchard, “Genes, Evolution and Intelligence”; Cofnas, “Science Is Not Always ‘Self-Correcting.’” 13.  Lewis et al., “The Mismeasure of Science”; Tattersall, “Stephen Jay Gould’s Intellectual Legacy to Anthropology.” 14. Brace, “Race” Is a Four-Letter Word, 19–23. 15. Blumenbach described five racial “varieties” relating to geographic areas somewhat aligned with continents; see Blumenbach, De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa, 303–19. 16. Haller, Outcasts from Evolution, 9. 17. Sömmerring, Über die körperliche Verschiedenheit des Mohren vom Europär, 12–13. 18.  Cuvier, “Extrait d’Observations Faite sur le Cadavre d’une Femme Connue à Paris et à Londres sous le Nom de Vénus Hottentotte,” 273. 19. Wegner, Franz Joseph Gall, 1758–1828; van Wyhe, Phrenology and the Origins of Victorian Scientific Naturalism. 20. Tomlinson, Head Masters. 21.  Phrenology was rejected by many naturalists through the nineteenth century as well: see Davies, Phrenology, Fad and Science; van Wyhe, Phrenology and the Origins of Victorian Scientific Naturalism; Hamilton, “‘Am I Not a Man and a Brother?’”; Poskett, “Phrenology, Correspondence, and the Global Politics of Reform.” 22.  Tiedemann received a medical degree from the University of Marburg in 1804 and went on to study under experts including Sömmerring, Gall, and Cuvier. He attended Friedrich Schelling’s (1775–1854) lectures and briefly advocated Naturphilosophie, but later turned to the functional anatomical approach exemplified by Blumenbach. As a professor at Heidelberg he published on embryology, physiology, and comparative anatomy. See Schmutz, “Einführung,” in Tiedemann, Das Hirn des Negers, reprint edition, ix–xx; Theodor Bischoff, Gedächtnisrede auf Friedrich Tiedemann, 24. 23. On the meaning of the word “race” in the nineteenth century, see Brace, “Race” Is a Four-Letter Word; Smedley, Race in North America.

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24.  Tiedemann, “On the Brain of the Negro,” 497. 25.  Morton was born to Episcopalian parents of English heritage in Philadelphia in 1799. Orphaned by the age of seventeen, Morton went on to receive medical degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and from Edinburgh University in Scotland. An active member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia from 1827 to his death in 1851, Morton’s lasting contributions to American science were his paleontological studies of invertebrates and his development of standard measurements for human crania. On Morton’s life and work, see Stanton, The Leopard’s Spots, 25–26; Roberts, Fatal Invention, 32–33; Painter, The History of White People, 191; Jordan, Colonial Families of Philadelphia, 1714–1715; Morton, A Memoir of William Maclure, Esq., i; Grant, Sketch of the Life and Character of Samuel George Morton, 1–16; New York Tribune, “Death of Samuel George Morton,” 5; on Morton’s legacy, see Hrdlička, Physical Anthropology, Its Scope and Aims, 32–44; Hrdlička, Letter to Edwin J. Nolan; Mann, “The Origins of American Physical Anthropology in Philadelphia,” 155–63. 26. Morton, Crania Americana, v. 27. Fabian, The Skull Collectors, 1. 28.  Morton’s cranial collection is today conserved as a resource for teaching and research by the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. Renschler and Monge, “The Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection,” 30–38; Morton, Catalogue of the Skulls; Erickson, “Morton, Samuel George (1799–1851),” 689–90. 29.  Combe, “Phrenological Remarks on the Relation Between the Natural Talents and Dispositions of Nations, and the Developments of their Brains,” 269–71. 30.  Schmutz, “Einführung,” in Tiedemann, Das Hirn des Negers, reprint edition, ix–xx. 31.  “Obituary Notices: Friedrich Tiedemann,” ci–civ. 32. Although Tiedemann did not support claims of racial differences in intelligence, he did write: “There is undoubtedly a very close connexion (sic) between the absolute size of the brain and the intellectual powers and functions of the mind.” Tiedemann, “On the Brain of the Negro,” 502. 33. Morton, An Illustrated System, 312, 437. 34.  Morton, “On the Size of the Brain,” 299. 35.  Ibid., 300. Also, Morton’s discussion of absolute brain size is a variation of text published a decade earlier by Andrew Combe (1797–1847). See Combe, “Remarks on the Fallacy,” 14–15. 36.  Morton, “Record of a Trip Taken by Morton to the West Indies,” 5; Finkelman, “Prelude to the Fourteenth Amendment: Black Legal Rights in the Antebellum North,” 431, passim. 37. Brace, “Race” Is a Four-Letter Word, 79; Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College. “An Inventory of the Parrish Family Papers, 1780–1966.” 38. Brace, “Race” Is a Four-Letter Word, 79. 39. Meigs, A Memoir, 14–15. 40. Brace, “Race” Is a Four-Letter Word, 79. 41.  Stone, “Thomas Hodgkin,” 368–75. 42.  Kass and Kass, Perfecting the World, 71, 92.



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43.  Desmond and Moore, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, 142–43. 44.  Stone, “Thomas Hodgkin,” 368–75. 45.  Rizzo and Rosenzweig, Finding Aid, ANSP Philadelphia President’s Office, 12. 46.  Peck and Stroud, A Glorious Enterprise, 6; Edward Nolan, A Short History of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 5–6; Ruschenberger, A Notice, 46. 47.  Quoted in Pitzer and Jones, New Harmony Then and Now, 70. 48.  Cook, “The Old Physical Anthropology,” 36. 49. John Collins, “The Library Company of Philadelphia Digital Collections”; John Collins, The Slave Mother. 50. Caldwell, Thoughts on the Original Unity of the Human Race; Brace, “Race” Is a Four-Letter Word, 70. 51.  Erickson, “The Anthropology of Josiah Clark Nott,” 103–20. 52. Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America, 59–60. 53. Brace, “Race” Is a Four-Letter Word, 69–71; Horsman, Josiah Nott of Mobile, 92–95. 54. Morton, Crania Americana, v. 55.  Fabian, “The Curious Cabinet of Dr. Morton,” 112–37. 56. Morton, Letter to Anders Retzius, November 17, 1848. 57. Morton, Letter to Thomas Lawson, July 1, 1836. 58. Homans, Army and Navy Chronicle, and Scientific Repository, 352; Ellisor, The Second Creek War: Interethnic Conflict and Collusion on a Collapsing Frontier. 59.  See specimen numbers 441, 579, and 751 in Morton, Catalogue of the Skulls of Man. 60.  The word “bozal” is derived from the old Spanish “bosal,” meaning muzzled or bridled. It referred to a recently arrived slave who was in the process of being forcibly trained for life in servitude. An 1887 Spanish dictionary defined “bozal” as “El negro recién sacado de su país (A Negro recently removed from his country).” Faquineto, Diccionario General Etimológico de la Lengua Española, 733; Renschler, “An Osteobiography of an African Diasporic Skeletal Sample,” 21. 61. Meigs, Catalogue, 62. 62.  Quoted in Renschler, “An Osteobiography of an African Diasporic Skeletal Sample,” 21. 63. Morton, Letter to George Combe, May 24, 1840. 64.  Tiedemann, “On the Brain of the Negro,” 511. 65. Morton, Crania Americana, 249–56, 262. 66.  Tiedemann, “On the Brain of the Negro,” 526. 67.  Nott, in Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, 397–98.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bischoff, Theodor. Gedächtnisrede auf Friedrich Tiedemann. München: Verlag der K. Akademie, 1861. Blumenbach, Johann. De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa, 3rd ed. Göttingen: Vanderhoek and Ruprecht, 1795.

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Bouchard, Thomas J. “Genes, Evolution and Intelligence.” Behavioral Genetics 44 (2014): 549–77. Brace, C. Loring. “Race” Is a Four-Letter Word: The Genesis of the Concept. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Caldwell, Charles. Thoughts on the Original Unity of the Human Race. New York: E. Bliss, 1830. Cofnas, Nathan. “Science is Not Always ‘Self-Correcting’: Fact-Value Conflation and the Study of Intelligence.” Foundations of Science 21, no. 3 (2016): 477–92. Collins, John. The Slave Mother. Philadelphia: The Anti-Slavery Fair, 1855. Collins, John. “The Library Company of Philadelphia Digital Collections.” Accessed June 2, 2012. https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/digitool: 79026. Combe, Andrew. “Remarks on the Fallacy of Professor Tiedemann’s Comparison of the Negro Brain and Intellect with those of the European.” The Phrenological Journal and Miscellany 9 (new series 1), no. 56 (1838): 14–15. Combe, George. “Phrenological Remarks on the Relation Between the Natural Talents and Dispositions of Nations, and the Developments of their Brains.” In Crania Americana, Crania Americana; Or, A Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America. Edited by Samuel George Morton. Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1839. Cook, Della. “The Old Physical Anthropology on the New World: A New Look at the Accomplishments of an Antiquated Paradigm.” In Bioarcheology: the Contextual Analysis of Human Remains. Edited by Jane Buikstra and Lane Beck. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006, 27–72. Cuvier, Georges. Extrait d’Observations Faite sur le Cadavre d’Une Femme Connue à Paris et à Londres sous le Nom de Vénus Hottentotte. Des Mémoires du Muséum d’histoire Naturelle 3 (1817): 259–74. Darwin, Charles, to Charles Lyell, June 2, 1847. American Philosophical Society. Davies, John. Phrenology, Fad and Science: A 19th-Century American Crusade. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955. Desmond, Adrian, and James Moore. Darwin’s Sacred Cause. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. Ellisor, John. The Second Creek War: Interethnic Conflict and Collusion on a Collapsing Frontier. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2010. Erickson, Paul. “The Anthropology of Josiah Clark Nott.” Kroeber Anthropology Society Papers 65–66 (1986): 103–20. ———. “Morton, Samuel George (1799–1851).” In A History of Physical Anthropology, an Encyclopedia. Edited by Frank Spencer. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997, 689–90. Evans, Gavin. “The Unwelcome Revival of ‘Race Science.’” The Guardian. March 2, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/02/the-unwelcome-revival -of-race-science. Fabian, Ann. “The Curious Cabinet of Dr. Morton.” In Acts of Possession: Collecting in America. Edited by Leah Dilworth. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003, 112–37.



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———. The Skull Collectors: Race, Science, and America’s Unburied Dead. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2010. Faquineto, Jose. Diccionario General Etimológico de la Lengua Española, vol. 1. Madrid, 1887. Finkelman, Paul. “Prelude to the Fourteenth Amendment: Black Legal Rights in the Antebellum North.” Rutgers Law Journal 17 (1986): 415–82. Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College. “An Inventory of the Parrish Family Papers, 1780–1966.” Accessed March 1, 2018. www.swarthmore.edu/library/ friends/ead/5229edpa.xml#bioghist. Gossett, Thomas F. Race: The History of an Idea in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Gottfredson, Linda. “Egalitarian Fiction and Collective Fraud.” Society 31, no. 3 (1994): 53–59. ———. “Resolute Ignorance on Race and Rushton.” Personality and Individual Differences 55 (2013): 218–33. Gould, Stephen. “Morton’s Ranking of Races by Cranial Capacity.” Science 200 (1978): 503–9. ———. The Mismeasure of Man, rev. ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. Grant, William. Sketch of the Life and Character of Samuel George Morton. Philadelphia: John Royer, 1851. Haller, John. Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859–1900. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971. Hamilton, Cynthia. “‘Am I Not a Man and a Brother?’ Phrenology and Anti-slavery.” Slavery and Abolition 20, no. 2 (2008): 173–87. Herrnstein, Richard, and Charles Murray. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Free Press, 1994. Homans, Benjamin. Army and Navy Chronicle, and Scientific Repository, vol. 3. Washington, DC: T. Barnard, 1836. Horsman, Reginald. Josiah Nott of Mobile. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1987. Hrdlička, Aleš, to Edwin J. Nolan, May 2, 1911. Samuel George Morton Papers, American Philosophical Society. Hrdlička, Aleš. Physical Anthropology, Its Scope and Aims; Its History and Present Status in America. Philadelphia: Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, 1919. Jensen, Arthur. “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Achievement?” Harvard Educational Review 39, no. 1 (1969): 1–123. ———. Bias in Mental Testing. New York: Free Press, 1981. Jordan, John. Colonial Families of Philadelphia, vol. 2. New York: Lewis Publishing Company, 1911. Kaplan, Jason, Massimo Pigliucci, and Jonathan Alexander Banta. “Gould on Morton, Redux.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 52 (2015): 22–31. Kass, Amelie, and Edward Kass. Perfecting the World: The Life and Times of Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, 1789–1866. Boston: Harcourt, 1988.

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Keim, Brandon. “The Mismeasures of Stephen Jay Gould.” Wired. June 14, 2011. https://www.wired.com/2011/06/gould-morton-revisited/. Lewis, Jason, David DeGusta, Marc Meyer, Janet M. Monge, Alan E. Mann, and Ralph L. Holloway. “The Mismeasure of Science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on Skulls and Bias.” PLoS Biology 9, no. 7 (2011): e1001071, https:// doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001071. Mann, Alan. “The Origins of American Physical Anthropology in Philadelphia.” Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 52 (2009): 155–63. Marks, Jonathan. Is Science Racist? Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2017. Meigs, Charles. A Memoir of Samuel George Morton. Philadelphia: M. D., T. K. and P. G. Collins Printers, 1851. Michael, John S. “A New Look at Morton’s Craniological Research.” Current Anthropology 29 (1988): 349–54. Mitchell, Paul Wolff. “The Fault in His Seeds: Lost Notes to the Case of Bias in Samuel George Morton’s Cranial Race Science.” PLoS Biology 16, no. 10 (2018): e2007008, http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2007008. Morton, Samuel George. “Record of a Trip Taken by Morton to the West Indies, Including Observations on Life, Work, Agriculture, and Slavery on Barbados and Other Islands,” circa 1834–1835. Mss.B.M843d Series II. American Philosophical Society, Samuel George Morton Papers. Morton, Samuel George, to Thomas Lawson, July 1, 1836. Princeton University Library, Wainwright Family Collection. Morton, Samuel. Crania Americana; Or, A Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America. Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1839. Morton, Samuel George, to George Combe, May 24, 1840. National Library of Scotland, George Combe Papers. Morton, Samuel. A Memoir of William Maclure, Esq. Philadelphia: T. K. and P. G. Collins, 1841. ———. Crania Aegyptiaca: Or, Observations on Egyptian Ethnography, Derived from Anatomy, History and the Monuments. Philadelphia: J. Penington, 1844. ———. “On the Size of the Brain in the Various Races and Families of Man.” In Types of Mankind. Edited by Josiah Nott and George Gliddon. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, and Company, 1845. Morton, Samuel George, to Anders Retzius, November 17, 1848. Retzius Papers, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm. Morton, Samuel. An Illustrated System of Human Anatomy. Philadelphia: Grigg, Elliot and Co., 1849. ———. Catalogue of the Skulls of Man and the Inferior Animals in the Collection of Samuel George Morton, 3rd ed. Philadelphia: Merrihew and Thompson, 1849. Nature. “Mismeasure for Mismeasure.” 474 (2011): 419. New York Tribune. “Death of Samuel George Morton.” 11, no. 3148 (1851): 5. Nolan, Edward. A Short History of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Academy of Natural Sciences, 1919. Nott, Josiah, and George Gliddon. Types of Mankind. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, and Company, Philadelphia, 1854.



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———. Types of Mankind, 8th ed. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippencott–London: Trübner and Co., 1857. Nott, Josiah. “Statistics of the Southern Slave Population.” The Commercial Review of the South and the West 4, no. 3 (1847): 275–87. ———. “The Slave Question,” The Commercial Review of the South and the West 4, no. 3 (1847): 278–89. “Obituary Notices: Friedrich Tiedemann.” Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society: Zoology, vol. 6. London: Longman, 1862. Painter, Nell. The History of White People. New York: Norton, 2010. Peck, Robert, and Patricia Stroud. A Glorious Enterprise. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Pitzer, Donald, and Darryl Jones. New Harmony Then and Now. Bloomington, IN: Quarry Books, 2012. Poskett, James. “Phrenology, Correspondence, and the Global Politics of Reform.” The Historical Journal 60, no. 2 (2017): 409–42. Proctor, Robert. Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Reardon, Jenny. Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Renschler, Emily, and Janet M. Monge. “The Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection: Historical Significance and New Research.” Expedition 50 (2008): 30–38. Renschler, Emily. “An Osteobiography of an African Diasporic Skeletal Sample: Integrating Skeletal and Historical Information.” Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2007. Richwine, Jason. “IQ and Immigration Policy.” Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 2007. Rizzo, Laurie, and Eric Rosenzweig. Finding Aid, ANSP Philadelphia President’s Office and Administration Records, 1874–2003 ANSP.2010.051. Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. Last updated September 20, 2010. Accessed January 30, 2018. https://www.ansp.org/~/media/Files/ans/library-archives/finding-aids/ ANSP_2010 051_Presidents_Office_and_Administration_Records_1874-2003. Roberts, Dorothy. Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Recreate Race in the Twenty-first Century. London: The New Press, 2011. Ruschenberger, William. A Notice of the Origin, Progress, and Present Condition of the ANSP. Philadelphia: T. K. and P. G. Collins Printers, 1852. Rushton, J. Philippe. Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, 1994. Sesardić, Neven. Making Sense of Heritability. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Shockley, William. “Dysgenics, Geneticity, Raceology: A Challenge to the Intellectual Responsibility of Educators.” The Phi Delta Kappan 53, no. 5 (1972), 297–307. Smedley, Audrey. Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999. Sömmerring, Samuel Thomas von. Über die körperliche Verschiedenheit des Mohren vom Europäer. Mainz, 1784.

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Stanton, William. The Leopard’s Spots. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. Stone, Marvin. “Thomas Hodgkin: Medical Immortal and Uncompromising Idealist.” Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings 18, no. 4 (2005): 368–75. Tattersall, Ian. “Stephen Jay Gould’s Intellectual Legacy to Anthroplogy.” In Stephen J. Gould: The Scientific Legacy. Edited by Gian Antonio Danieli, Alessandro Minelli, Telmo Pievani. Milan, Italy: Springer-Verlag Italia, 2013. Tiedemann, Friedrich. “On the Brain of the Negro, Compared With That of the European and the Orang-Outang.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 126 (1836): 497–527. ———. Das Hirn des Negers mit dem des Europäers und Orang-Outangs verglichen. Heidelberg: Winter Verlag, 1837. ———. Das Hirn des Negers mit dem des Europäers und Orang-Outangs verglichen, reprint edition. Marburg and der Lahn: Basilisken-Presse, 1984. Tomlinson, Stephen. Head Masters: Phrenology, Secular Education, and NineteenthCentury Social Thought. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2005. van Wyhe, John. Phrenology and the Origins of Victorian Scientific Naturalism. London: Routledge, 2004. Wade, Nicholas. “Scientists Measure the Accuracy of a Racism Claim.” New York Times, June 14, 2011. ———. A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History. London: Penguin Books, 2014. Wegner, Peter-Christian. Franz Joseph Gall, 1758–1828: Studien zu Leben, Werk und Wirkung. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1991. Weisberg, Michael. “Remeasuring Man.” Evolution and Development 16 (2014): 166–78. Weisberg, Michael, and Diane Paul. “Morton, Gould, and Bias.” PLoS Biology 14, no. 4 (2016): e1002444, http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002444. Yudell, Michael, Dorothy Roberts, Rob DeSalle, and Sarah Tishkoff. “Taking Race Out of Human Genetics.” Science 351, 6273 (2016): 564–65.

Chapter Five

Female Vampires as Embodied Critiques of Heteronormativity, Blood-Mixing, and Patriarchy From Carmilla to Fledgling Dorisa Costello Upon her neck and breast was blood, and upon her throat were the marks of teeth having opened the vein:—to this the men pointed crying, simultaneously struck with horror, “a Vampyre, a Vampyre!” —John Polidori, The Vampyre (1819)1 “The blood is the life! The blood is the life!” —Renfield, character from Dracula (1897)2

INTRODUCTION For at least four hundred years, the vampire has surfaced as a fraught and contested body to occupy liminal spaces: It lurks between life and death, steals blood without becoming a cannibal, engages in deviant sexual acts while remaining free of social criticism, vacillates among good and evil, and presents as both the self and Other. This is the power of the vampire—to embody social and political anxiety, and complicate the darkest of taboos. In this chapter, I use a feminist lens to interrogate the construction of the female vampire across two novels key to the development of the vampire genre. My analysis develops as an examination of how these foundational novels, Carmilla (1872)3 and Fledgling (2005),4 and their constructions of female vampires, entangle with critiques of social anxieties related to female empowerment, historical tensions regarding the purity of Whiteness with regard to both the ownership of both land and the female body, and the contemporary problematics of racist orientations to valuing social differences embodied by female, Black, polyamorous5 Others. In this way, I develop an 99

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intersectional and temporal approach to the female vampire in literature that potently links to today’s ongoing discussions of White privilege, the Black Lives Matter movement, and sexual assault allegations. VAMPIRIC ORIGINS To be certain, we can blame the modern vampire on renowned British poet Lord Byron. Literary scholar Carol A. Senf’s historiography of the vampire in nineteenth-century literature locates its origins in Eastern Europe as early as 1642. In printed pamphlets from that time, the vampire was mentioned alongside concerns with the conflict between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches of the region. Regarding this storied religious conflict, Senf notes that “where Catholic Hungarians and Orthodox Serbs and Walachs intermingled,” a distrust of neighbors combined with outbreaks of several epidemics—the Black Plague in 1692, and smallpox in 1708 and again in 1719—led to stories of vampirism and suspicions of “vampire epidemics.”6 Eventually, these rural, Eastern European tales spread in popularity, reaching German universities, and flourishing through academic exchanges between British and German Enlightenment scholars during the nineteenth century in England. The first literary vampire in English fiction is Lord Ruthven, the brooding, sexual predator from John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1816), written during the same snowed-in storytelling gathering at Villa Diodati that produced Frankenstein. Polidori was Lord Byron’s personal physician at the time, and the vampire lord is supposedly based on the young writer. With this Byronic model as a framework, the vampire was adapted from the vicious animalistic hunter of Eastern European folklore into the mysterious, hypnotic seducer we have all come to fear and love in our modern day. A great climax of this archetype, of course, is Count Dracula, by which every vampire has since been weighed and measured. Dracula isn’t the first, but he sets the precedent, and it is a decidedly sexual—heterosexual—one at that. In fact, the preface to the critical Norton edition of Dracula by literary scholars Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal argues that the heterosexual construction of Dracula was a deliberate choice on Stoker’s part, given the aftermath of writer and social critic Oscar Wilde’s sodomy trial and Stoker’s personal association with Wilde. Though the details of their relationship are not clear, Stoker was a great admirer of Wilde, who was openly homosexual, and he may have based Dracula’s character on aspects of Wilde.7 Auerbach and Skal also contend that though some lingering traces of Wilde’s influence remain in the novel, “Stoker did his best to expunge it,” instead creating a “scrupulously hygienic, even monogamous” antagonist who only feeds upon



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women.8 Though hints of homoeroticism were included in the 1899 American edition of the novel, in the form of Dracula’s contemplation of “feast[ing] on Jonathan [Harker],” these were ultimately removed.9 So, it is therefore interesting, given the adamant heteronormativity10 of the novel Dracula, that its antecedent, the source from which Stoker drew heavy inspiration, is actually about a lesbian vampire. The novella Carmilla, predating Dracula by a good twenty-seven years in its authorship by fellow Irishman Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, forecasts many of the staple themes we have come to expect from the vampire mythos: a far-flung locale with a dark, derelict estate; a naïve hero/ine; a world-weary monster hunter; an erotic, mysterious, deadly creature of the night. Yet unlike Dracula, Carmilla complicates the predator/ prey dichotomy by insisting on its intersections of body, race, and gender. Then, some 130 years later, Octavia E. Butler’s novel Fledgling revisits and expands upon these intersections in a more direct, but no less profound way. Shori, the protagonist of Fledgling, is a Black, pansexual11 vampire, whose body is the contested site of power, desire, purity politics, and ultimately, love and community. Because of her literary rarity, the female vampire, along with the nonWhite vampire (even rarer still), finds her traditional antithesis in the White, Western (usually male) protagonist. While the vampire in literature often stands in opposition to the hetero-nuclear family as a disrupter of such normalized and reproductive spaces—as Dracula “[attacks] men by destroying their women in proper British fashion”12—female vampires, with Carmilla and Shori as key examples, offer a lens through which to reimagine, and implode that gender and sexuality binary. Both Carmilla and Shori in their queer, raced, gendered bodies, present a threat to patriarchal and national communities; however, the two novels each articulate agency, identity, and ultimately viability, differently. Where Carmilla is destroyed by national and patriarchal hegemonic pressures, Shori reconstructs herself and her kin in an alternative familial structure that is legitimized and even celebrated. It is, in fact, the intersections of Shori’s bodily presentation—race, gender, and sexuality, specifically—that allow her to revise normative spaces. Importantly, these two vampire narratives, past and present, offer us a site of investigation and interrogation of who we are as fans, women, and participants in our societies. IRISH EYES ARE SMILING . . . AND HUNGERING The vampire in Britain, with the author Polidori as its many times greatgrandfather, has its roots in Irish folklore as well. The Irish literary tradition was one with which both Le Fanu and Stoker were likely familiar, especially

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the ban sídhe (anglicized as “banshee”), a sexual predator much like the vampire.13 Literary scholar Robert Tracy notes that as a boy Le Fanu, in particular, heard many such Irish legends from a town storyteller.14 Having had early encounters with the rich folkloric tradition of the Irish, Le Fanu and Stoker incorporated many of these boyhood stories into their later writings. These were literary works in which they used the gothic genre, and vampires specifically, as vehicles for exploring the various social and political upheavals that punctuated mid-nineteenth-century Ireland, most particularly the Catholic Emancipation of 1829, when disenfranchised Catholic Irish regained access to social and political power. As such, it is not a coincidence that we begin to see a conflation of the horrors found in Irish folkloric tradition with contemporary social and political anxieties, especially from the Anglo-Irish (and Protestant) writers like Le Fanu and Stoker, who must have feared atavistic reprisals from the Catholic Irish. In Carmilla, specifically in the protagonist Laura, we can see how the blending of Irish folklore and the gothic reflects contemporary anxieties in the Anglo-Irish national body, symbolically represented by the structures of power enacted on the physical, raced body. Narrated in the first person, Carmilla recounts the story of Laura, a young English expatriate living with her father and their small household in Styria, a fictitious Eastern European province. One evening, a mysterious carriage breaks down in front of their schloss, or castle, depositing an equally peculiar guest, Carmilla, to be later revealed as not only a vampire, but the ancient ancestor of Laura through her mother’s Styrinian blood.15 Yet, despite her familial connection to Styria, Laura takes great pains to emphasize her Englishness. Laura says in the beginning of her narrative that, “My father is English and I bear an English name, although I never saw England.”16 She says also that she and her father speak English every day “partly to prevent its becoming a lost language among us, and partly for patriotic motives.”17 In fact, Laura even indicates that her household takes tea in the English style, rather than coffee as is local custom, due to her father’s “usual patriotic leanings.”18 With each detail, Laura insists on her English heritage though she has been removed to foreign soil. Most striking here, are these literary parallels to the experience of the Anglo-Irish, who like Laura may never have seen England although they purposefully imported its customs onto Irish lands in their lives as expatriates. In this same section of the Carmilla narrative, Laura describes the schloss as a “feudal residence,”19 implying both that Laura’s family now inhabits the role of managers of the land, and that somewhere along the line, the original lords of the land were displaced. Even if by default, her family has co-opted governance of the “dependents who occupy rooms in the buildings attached



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to the schloss;”20 thus by every indication Laura and her family are, in effect, feudal lords. She also condescendingly calls the land “primitive” in a move to distance herself from it.21 Her father’s insistence that the household should practice decidedly English modes of conduct, coupled with their disparaging attitude toward the local inhabitants, parallels the occupation of Ireland by the Anglo-Irish and implicates Laura and her family in this same colonial project. Through this identification of Laura with England (and hence the AngloIrish), the intrusion of Carmilla as an unexpected and “foreign” guest, though not immediately recognized as such by Laura or her family, recalls very powerfully, the social opposition to Anglo-Irish occupation of Ireland during the nineteenth century. Carmilla, as the deviant and predatory antagonist, readily represents the “original” or non-hyphenated Irish, who, newly empowered, may seek revenge on their usurpers and reclaim the land and heritage that is theirs by ancient right. Using the undead as vampiric and predatory stand-ins for this ancient, atavistic threat we can see how, as one literary scholar has put it: “The undead become the ancient Catholic masters of the land, eager to destroy those who now enjoy their former estates. The Irish past comes back, not to haunt but to destroy.”22 As it so happens, Carmilla turns out to be the ancient relation of Laura, her present-day victim. This is first revealed in a scene involving the renovated portrait of Mircalla, Countess of Karnstein. The striking similarities between the portrait and the mysterious young Carmilla are too close to be coincidence, right down to a mole the countess has on her neck. But the inhabitants of the house pay only passing attention to this likeness, and equally naïve Laura, soon infatuated with Carmilla, asks to hang the portrait in her room.23 Then, Carmilla makes one of her most straightforward remarks after Laura, remarking on the portrait, describes herself as related to the Karnstein house through her mother. Carmilla says: “‘So am I, I think, a very long descent, very ancient.’”24 The dramatic irony of this scene is made all the more palpable since readers will have already pieced together that Carmilla/Mircalla (and later another anagrammatic variation, “Millarca”) is a vampire. Still, however, Laura does not discover this until the novel’s penultimate chapter. Even though the signs are all before her, somehow Laura either cannot, or will not, acknowledge the truth. Though related to Laura’s family, Carmilla is not to be considered a party to their Anglo-Irish heritage. Her ancient connection to a noble, but now “ruined” family places her instead with the original inhabitants of the land, the Karnsteins.25 This means that Carmilla is not merely a descendant of the Karnstein family, but an actual member of it. Also, her supernatural, predatory nature both symbolically and historically links her with the sìdhe, especially the ban sìdhe who often targeted members of their own family, foretelling the deaths of these family members. In this, Carmilla’s blood ties

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to Laura connect her to both the Irish folklore tradition and the contemporary Anglo-Irish fears of the Irish peasantry. Still, the comparison is not terribly straightforward. Carmilla, once the Countess Karnstein, is/was aristocracy. Laura notes that Carmilla’s family is “very ancient and noble.”26 As Tracy suggests, the sìdhe were traditionally euphemistically connected to aristocracy in the minds of the peasantry, often called “the gentry” and described in like terms: “Powerful, unpredictable, sometimes malevolent, and different in their behavior, religion, language and customs.”27 In the novel, Carmilla is indeed all of these things: she is preturnaturally attractive and alluring (especially to Laura); possesses inordinate physical strength and uncanny abilities; her mood fluctuates from sanguineous to venomous in a matter of moments; she is clearly sadistic— her haunting ends in the deaths of several young women; she sleeps most of the day and wanders the estate grounds at night; and she detests all signs of Christianity. Equally, her disdain for peasantry becomes evident in her first interaction with them. Once, while standing together outside, Carmilla and Laura witness a funeral procession for a young peasant woman from the next village. Carmilla’s response to the scene, in addition to being repulsed by the singing of hymns, is: “‘She? I don’t trouble my head about peasants. I don’t know who she is.’”28 In this dialogue, Carmilla’s tone is clearly dismissive. This stance is repeated when she encounters a traveling tinkerer, a hunchback mountebank who seems to reveal how he sees more thoroughly who Carmilla really is when he comments on the sharpness of her teeth. Carmilla’s disdain for him, as well as her sadistic nature, is revealed when she threatens him with flogging and burning.29 Too, Laura shares Carmilla’s contempt for the lower classes. In counting the members of her household, Laura excludes the servants and the tenancy attached to the schloss.30 She offers no explanation for her dismissal of them, but this indicates she does not consider them family or worthy of inclusion. The fact that Carmilla and Laura share this attitude blurs the line between the Anglo-Irish/heritage Irish binary. Carmilla’s connection to the sìdhe reinforces her supernatural, predatory character, but also problematizes her as a symbol of the Catholic Irish (heritage Irish) tenancy. To this point, Tracy’s historiography links tensions in the historic rise of the Catholic Irish in both economic and political power, to the literary shift in identifying the sìdhe with Anglo-Irish landed gentry to the Catholic Irish peasantry. This tension surfaces as an odd inconsistency, but it seems that this could also be indicative, especially for the author Le Fanu, of his frustration at the political inactivity of his own class as well as his ethnocentric anxiety toward Catholic Irish revival. This ethnocentrism becomes more clear as Laura experiences the appropriation of her body by the vampire Carmilla, and shares lingering fears of



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miscegenation associated with her interaction with the vampire. By locating the national body within the physical body, Laura becomes the battleground upon which the racialized and ethnicized class war is played out across Anglo-Irish aristocrats and heritage Irish peasants. Throughout the novel, this conflict takes on decidedly sexual overtones, both hetero- and homoerotic, as the two sides contend for possession of Laura’s body. Also important in Carmilla is the legal and social custody that Laura’s father has over her. As the male head of her family—Laura being unmarried—Laura’s father has the sovereign right of rule over his daughter, to dispense with her as he chooses. When it becomes clear that Laura is falling prey to the same force that has already claimed several other young women, Laura’s father seeks to defend his possession. To this end, he solicits the aid of other men: Baron Vordenberg, General Spielsdorf, and Doctor Spielsberg, all of whom examine, confer over and exploit Laura’s body to one degree or another, in order to discover the cause of the mayhem. Baron Vordenberg and General Spielsdorf interrogate Laura about Carmilla, using her information to piece together the mystery of the vampire without explaining to her what is happening.31 Likewise, the interrogation and physical examination conducted by Doctor Spielsberg is secretive and especially invasive, forcing Laura to expose her body to both the doctor and her father. The doctor asks: “You won’t mind your papa’s lowering your dress a very little. It is necessary, to detect a symptom of the complaint under which you have been suffering.” I acquiesced . . . “God bless me!—so it is,” exclaimed my father, growing pale. “You see now with your own eyes,” said the doctor, with gloomy triumph. “What is it?” I exclaimed, beginning to be frightened. “Nothing, my dear young lady, but a small blue spot, about the size of the tip of your finger; and now,” he continued, turning to papa, “The question is, what is best to be done.”32

As this segment of the novel reveals, Laura must pull down her dress and indicate where on her breast she has been bitten, and then she is shut out of the conversation of what is going on with a patronizing “there, there, my dear,” though it is clear that both Doctor Spielsberg and her father now know the source of her troubles. As stand-ins for the Anglo-Irish authority who have rule of the land, men of privilege pass Laura’s body around between them in the absence of her consent. The anxiety of these empowered men centers on the illicit carnal contact, in both the sexual and bodily senses of the word, between Carmilla and Laura and the contamination of blood. A primary fear for the Anglo-Irish, and one

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that is exemplified by the vampire, is miscegenation. Throughout the British Isles, including Ireland during the mid-1800s, land ownership and hereditary titles were passed down through blood relations. The idealized purity of bloodlines ensured that lands remained within the family generation to generation; hence, a disruption or dilution of that bloodline threatened the class status of the landed gentry. This hemo-purity became an even more immediate concern when the Catholic Irish, the original, but dispossessed occupants of Ireland, suddenly had the economic and social power to renew their ancient claims. Blood, then, became not only the material, but the symbolic, vestige of the British nation. Therefore, when Carmilla attacks Laura, her fangs not only pierce Laura’s physical body, but they symbolically “penetrate” national boundaries. Carmilla not only poaches, in a sense, another man’s territory, but she also challenges the ownership of that body/nation, reclaiming what, by ancestral right and generations of familial blood ties, belongs to her. Though conventional miscegenation cannot take place because true intermingling of blood through the production of mixed offspring is not possible between Laura and Carmilla (the penetration of Laura’s body being non-reproductive), their contact is nonetheless a breach of socially constructed boundaries, doubly so because of the taboo of homosexuality. The vampiric theft of blood is thereby a dramatic theft of nationhood. Indeed, as Carmilla feeds on Laura through subsequent nocturnal visitations, Laura reports a gradual weakening of her body. The night after one such visitation, Laura awakens from sleep with “a sense of lassitude and melancholy.”33 After another such visit by Carmilla, she feels a “sense of exhaustion,” which causes her to grow “pale” with eyes that are “dilated and darkened underneath” because of “languor (sic).”34 Laura’s once “pure” blood becomes tainted, infected by the vampire’s bite, the effects of which tell upon her body: weakness, restlessness, and even possible mental instability. The physical toll on Laura’s body mirrors the economic and political weakening feared by the Anglo-Irish as the Catholic Irish tenancy grew in power. As Laura falters and Carmilla takes more and more control, so might the Anglo-Irish slip from their ascendance and the heritage Irish reclaim the body that was once theirs. Ironically, one way to circumvent miscegenation would have been through incest, as an act of literally keeping the blood in the family. Yet this option turns out to be the very complex source of the miscegenation feared. As Laura’s ancient ancestor, Carmilla returns to her own blood in order to reclaim it from the male hegemony that currently possess it. Carmilla asserts her own feminist right to Laura, stating: “‘You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever.’”35 Later, Carmilla says: “‘I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so.’”36



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Each vampiric attack of Carmilla’s is framed in intimate rather than violent terms; one episode in particular likely equally signifies sexual intercourse and orgasm: . . . [T]here came a sensation as if a hand was drawn softly along my cheek and neck. Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, and long and more lovingly as they reached my throat, but there the caress fixed itself. My heart beat faster, my breath rose and fell rapidly and full drawn; a sobbing, that rose in a sense of strangulation, supervened, and turned into a dreadful convulsion, in which my senses left me and I became unconscious.37

Senf notes how this, and other attacks are “described in terms of love instead of violence,” unlike in earlier vampire stories and certainly not in Dracula, where lust and overt animal eroticism almost entirely replace romantic tenderness.38 Carmilla’s claim on Laura, deeply erotic as it is, challenges not only Laura’s father’s right over his daughter, but also heteronormative systems. Miscegenation is averted by lesbian homoeroticism and incest, but at the same time, bodily and national identities are also disrupted by these same forces. “YOU’RE DEFINITELY THE NEW, IMPROVED MODEL”39 Contamination via blood-mixing, or miscegenation, is also a concern in Octavia E. Butler’s Fledgling, but not quite in the same way. Set in the contemporary United States, the novel introduces readers to the Ina, a race of pale-skinned, vampire-like beings, who live in symbiotic relation with select humans, whom they call symbionts. The Ina feed from their symbionts without killing them, relying upon them for food, but also emotional and psychological well-being; in return, their venom, though addictive, stimulates erotic pleasure for their symbionts, enhances their mental faculties, provides them immunity against most health issues, and thus substantially prolongs their human life. Though the Ina may have sexual relations with their symbionts, they do not transform these humans through their bite as traditional vampires do, and instead reproduce sexually with their own species. The conflict in the novel occurs when one Ina family genetically modifies one of their offspring. This shift in the vampire mythos is quite telling, especially considering Butler’s own position as one of the first Black women to write in the science fiction genre, and certainly the most prominent, as a winner of many of the genre’s most prestigious awards. She said of herself, “I’m black,40 I’m solitary, I’ve always been an outsider,”41 and it is perhaps because of this that her work often centers on the creation of community, of insider versus outsider,

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and personal agency and determination, which is clearly seen in Fledgling. During her lifetime, Butler also noted the lack of diverse representation in science fiction, and said, “The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters so feeble-witted that they couldn’t manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I’m me and I’m here and I’m writing.”42 Writing herself in, Butler’s protagonists often embody her own intersectionality as a Black woman. Scholars Kilgore and Samantrai note that “for Butler, the most intimate fear is located at the meeting point of race and sex” and thus her “hybrid communities . . . do provide glimpses of a social order that resolves some of the terror of our own.”43 At that meeting point is Shori Matthews, the first-person protagonist of Fledgling. She is a fifty-three-year-old Ina who appears to be a ten- or elevenyear-old girl, but is unique among the Ina in that she has been genetically engineered: she is an Ina/ human hybrid with dark skin. Her skin color, we learn, makes her less susceptible to the sun, which is deadly to the Ina, and allows her to be awake and alert during the day.44 As the novel opens, Shori suffers from amnesia, later revealed to have been caused by a brutal attack by members of her own kind who oppose her hybridity. She is unaware that she is a vampire, or of the precarious political repercussions of her very existence, and so the reader learns of this along with Shori, and through it, how the novel’s author locates Shori’s body as a site of raced and gendered tension and fluidity. We are told throughout the novel that the Ina themselves do not regard human race or gender as particularly important: symbionts can be of any gender or any race. Brook, a female symbiont who later joins Shori’s family, tells Wright, a male, and Shori’s first symbiont: “They’re not human. . . . They don’t care about white or black” (sic).45 Another Ina also comments that: “Human racism meant nothing to the Ina because human races meant nothing to them. They looked for congenial human symbionts wherever they happened to be, without regard for anything but personal appeal.”46 However, some Ina object to Shori’s genetic alteration, not on grounds of racial purity (assuming such a thing exists), but that of species. In retaliation for what these Ina consider a contamination of the species, they murder the Matthews family, and Shori’s paternal family, the Petrescus, leaving Shori the sole survivor. Though they claim not to consider race, the family who is most adamantly against Shori’s hybridity, the Silk family and their representative Katharine Dahlman, use racist and species-centric or ethnocentrist rhetoric to oppose her, thus conflating these concerns in their discourse. Miscegenation fears of human/Ina mixing are thus filtered through Shori’s Blackness. Literary critic Ali Brox notes that Butler “uses the hybrid vampire figure not only to challenge the Ina’s species prejudice but also to challenge



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the black/white binary that preoccupies American society.”47 We see this clearly when the Silk family brainwashes a group of humans to attempt to kill Shori and her families, and one of the men is caught and interrogated: “Victor,” I began, “do you know me? Who am I?” He surprised me. “Dirty little nigger bitch,” he said reflexively. “Goddamn mongrel cub.” [. . .] “They call me those things, don’t they?” He nodded. “Because I’m dark-skinned?” “And human,” he said. “Ina mixed with some human or maybe human mixed with a little Ina. That’s not supposed to happen. Not ever. Couldn’t let you and you . . . your kind . . . your family . . . breed.”48

Literary and social critic Therí Pickens also notes how the Silks mobilize racist stereotypes during the Council of Judgment, an Ina trial to determine if their laws have been broken regarding the murder of Shori’s family, and if so, who the perpetrators are. In particular, the Silks invoke discourse of the seductive, overly sexual Black woman in their accusation that Shori has already initiated the bond of mates with Daniel Gordon.49 Pickens observes: “Russell [Silk] obliquely references stereotypes of excessive Black female hypersexuality (the Jezebel archetype who indiscriminately seduces men based on their value) implying that Shori is dangerous based on being ‘female Ina’ to an unacceptable degree.”50 Thus, the danger of miscegenation within the species is framed in both overt and subtle racial terms. Shori’s raced and gendered body, with its potential to produce more hybrid offspring, endangers the imagined purity of the Ina, so much so that some families would kill to see an end to Shori’s potential to mate and reproduce. In her literary analysis of Fledgling, Pickens additionally points out that regardless of the Ina’s expressed views on race, they nonetheless are governed by and benefit from White privilege: “Shori’s interactions clarify that White privilege, as a hegemonic social order, governs by consent such that the Ina constrained by it also acquiesce to its rules. They are oblivious to the way White privilege governs the most basic relationships with their symbionts.”51 This supposed lack of awareness by the Ina is contrasted with the human symbionts’ awareness of race, in particular those who are new to the Ina. Wright, a twentythree-year-old White human male, takes great care in hiding his relationship with Shori. Later, it is suggested that Celia, another symbiont, accompany Shori into a clothing store rather than Wright, because it would appear less suspicious for Shori to be with an older Black woman, who could pass as her mother or sister, as opposed to a young White man.52 Though her appearance

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as a child certainly complicates her public association with her symbionts (that is, the potential to be mistaken as pedophilic), it is particularly Shori’s skin color that the novel emphasizes. Yet, regardless of the Silks’ feelings on the matter, Shori’s color is framed as beneficial to the Ina rather than detrimental. One Ina tells her: “Child, do you understand your uniqueness, your great value? . . . You are a treasure. You would be an asset to any community . . . there isn’t a community that wouldn’t be happy to have an Ina guardian who could be awake and alert during the day.”53 Whereas in Carmilla, miscegenation is a threat to Laura’s ability to stand in for the British body politic, in Fledgling, Shori’s hybridity and skin color are assets necessary to Ina survival and prosperity. Aside from the benefits of sun-immunity mentioned earlier, the scholar Pelin Kümbet suggests that Shori’s hybridity affords her also “human features and human/e emotions alike.”54 Even before she realizes she is a vampire, Shori is concerned with treating her victims (and later symbionts) well. In her first encounter with Wright, Shori feeds from him, and reflects, “I could have taken more, but I didn’t want to hurt him.”55 Later she realizes: “He had enjoyed it—maybe as much as I had. I felt pleased, felt myself smile. That was right somehow. I’d done it right.”56 Her care and concern is contrasted with members of the Silk family who neglect their symbionts, and with Katharine Dahlman, who uses her symbiont to kill one of Shori’s. Even when Shori interrogates one of the humans who was used as a tool to kill her families, she treats him with compassion, offering him food, and healing his wounds.57 This nurturance and humane treatment is in stark contrast with the vampire mythos established in Dracula, and even before it in Carmilla, where human victims are classified as victims, and routinely killed, even when they are loved, as is the case of Carmilla and Laura. Shori even comments on this drastic difference when she researches vampires, trying to get a handle on who and what she is. She remarks: “And it made no sense, at least for those who took blood. Who could need that much blood? Why kill a person who would willingly feed you again and again if you handled them carefully?”58 Later, Iosif Petrescu, Shori’s Ina father, tells her, “‘We have little in common with the vampire creatures Bram Stoker described in Dracula, but we are long-lived blood drinkers.’”59 In fact, though the superior strength and longevity of the Ina is repeatedly emphasized throughout the novel, we can also see, through the amnesia which forces Shori to re-learn how to be Ina herself, that the relationship between Ina and symbiont is much more mutually symbiotic, framed in domestic terms, than perhaps the Ina would like to think. One Ina, Joan Braithwaite, whom we are told was born when Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne,60 admits this vital fact about the Ina/symbiont



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relationship: “We need our symbionts more than most of them know. We need not only their blood, but physical contact with them and emotional reassurance from them. Companionship . . . We either weave ourselves a family of symbionts, or we die. Our bodies need theirs.”61 In Fledgling the Ina create polyamorous families with their human symbionts, which are separate from the mating relationships they have with other Ina. In her analysis of Butler’s novel, Brox shows how Shori constructs her family with great diversity: her symbionts are male and female, Black and White, and of varying ages: “The Ina/human relationships exemplify various sexual inclinations: the Ina have no reservations or prohibitions about interracial, homosexual, or pedophilic sex between Ina and their humans, and multiple sexual partners are encouraged for both the Ina and their symbionts.”62 As opposed to deviant, this diverse construction of family within Butler’s novel is the norm, one that is mutually nurturing and empowering. In Patricia Hill Collins’s sociological analysis of motherhood and race in America, she comments on how race has been used to construct modes of acceptable and unacceptable motherhood, with biologically reproductive, White upper- and middle-class mothers at the top of the hierarchy, and Black working-class mothers on the bottom.63 Hill Collins also shows how the definition of “real” motherhood is one that is biologically reproductive in heavily normative ways: “Presumptions of blood ties underlie both constructs [the biological, nuclear family and the American national family].”64 This singular construct of the family thereby upholds adoptive, queer, and extended families as non-normative or even deviant. On the question of the mother herself, Hill Collins claims that the prevailing American image is that, “‘Real’ mothers are those who take care of the home, who provide that sanctuary that must be protected.”65 Given the American context of Fledgling, Shori, then, is a legitimate mother to her symbiont family regardless of her race, though the family structure itself may be construed as deviant. Beyond biological blood ties, Shori’s family is formed through the taking of blood, mutual need and support, and protection. When symbionts Celia and Brook’s Inas are killed, Shori takes them in as her own.66 Shori also takes in Theodora, a lonely post-menopausal White woman.67 Though Theodora offers no practical benefit to Shori’s family as a non-reproductive member, Shori’s strong feelings move her to care for and nurture Theodora. Kümbet suggests that Shori’s “considerable care and responsibility for her kinship and her symbionts reinforces her instinct to kill.”68 However, while the instinct to kill and protect her own flares up when Shori realizes who murdered her families, I suggest that she does not follow instinct, but rather submits to the Ina justice system. Though Shori does ultimately fight

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Katharine Dahlman, the Ina who sent her symbiont to kill Theodora, this is done in self-defense when Katharine attacks Shori after her sentence is passed by the Council of Judgment, and ultimately it is the council who executes Katharine.69 Thus, Shori as a queer, gendered, raced Other embodies the anxieties at work in a heteronormative, patriarchal, racist society in much the same way as Carmilla. However, as the author of Fledgling, Butler reframes sexuality, gender, and race to be attributes rather than threats. Shori’s pansexuality is meaningful to the construction of a nurturing and mutually symbiotic family, in contrast to Carmilla’s lesbianism, which Laura ultimately rejects, and the patriarchal hegemony of Styria destroy. Ultimately, Shori’s Blackness is framed as beneficial to her species, as opposed to Carmilla’s ethnocentrist threat of miscegenation and usurpation. ALL IN THE FAMILY Though Carmilla and Fledgling both star queer, raced, female vampires, the agency granted to Carmilla and Shori couldn’t be more different. Even as the overt lesbianism in Carmilla challenges patriarchal heteronormativity, it is not allowed to challenge it for long. In keeping with vampiric tradition, Carmilla is vanquished by the end of the novel. Carmilla’s decapitation and staking through the heart is a clear signal of blatant male hegemony asserting itself—literally—into the female body. Literary scholar Tamar Heller notes how “Carmilla’s execution suggests a feminized version of castration; moreover, the stake driven through the body of the lesbian vampire whose biting had mimicked the act of penetration is a raw assertion of phallic power.”70 Though Carmilla dies violently, the possibility of her living on through Laura is hinted at in the final chapter, and through the novel’s epistolary framing device. Le Fanu’s Carmilla actually has two frames: the most external, and therefore the most recent, is that of a medical case study by a Doctor Hesselius.71 The interior frame of Carmilla, however, through which Laura’s first-person narrative is told, is a letter addressed to “a town lady.”72 Laura tells the reader that the letter is given at the woman’s “earnest desire so repeatedly expressed.”73 This letter acts as a kind of transmission of Laura, and therefore Carmilla, to another woman. Le Fanu implants the possibility of vampiric transference from woman to woman into the text, though it is never explicitly realized. When Baron Vordenberg relates the myth of the vampire to Laura, her father, and General Spielsdorf after tracking down the Countess Karnstein’s grave (Carmilla’s original incarnation), he comments that the “spectre visits



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living people in their slumbers; they die, and almost invariably, in the grave, develop into vampires.”74 Where it is clear that this is what led to Carmilla’s transformation into a vampire, we are left to wonder if it will happen to Laura, Bertha, and Carmilla’s other victims. Will Carmilla’s knowledge pass to these women, who, rising up from the grave of their sexual and emotional death at the hands of oppressive patriarchy, will then pass it to others, like Laura’s interlocutor? Carmilla herself tells Laura, “As I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others.”75 In this way, Laura’s letter takes on vampiric qualities; she metaphorically “penetrates” her interlocutor with her pen, transmitting her narrative, and reproducing herself. These women, and perhaps we as readers, then become Carmilla’s offspring, just as she sires others through Laura’s narrative. Shori’s fate is far more optimistic, and the domestic image more stable, though it, too, remains ambiguous. Unlike the traditional vampires Carmilla and Dracula, that reproduce through biting their human victims and transforming them, the Ina mate in sibling groups with other Ina in exclusive, but multiple pairings: all of the sisters of one family mate with all of the brothers of another. The mating process makes those involved fertile only with the mated siblings and no other. Shori, as the single member of her family, poses somewhat of a risk as a mate—she alone would be expected to produce several offspring, preferably males, in order to perpetuate the family line. Yet the Gordon family, with whom she negotiates for mates, seems to regard this potential risk as light in comparison to the benefit of what Shori’s hybridity may offer to the next generation (This mating is separate from any sexual relations she may have with her human symbionts, with whom she (probably) cannot reproduce). Brox points out in her literary critique that since Shori has no fathers to negotiate for mates, she has the freedom to do so herself; however, there is never any question of her mating, which problematizes the agency she has over her body.76 Though Shori is not yet of reproductive age, her potential can only be speculated, but as was mentioned before, several Ina families attest to her value to the Ina as a whole, and the Gordon family, at least, is willing to risk her as their single mate. Regardless of the issue of mating, Shori finds other ways to bypass the patriarchal structures within the Ina community, as both her hybridity and amnesia necessitate a greater reliance upon her symbionts, especially the human woman Brook as the most experienced symbiont, and other female Ina. At the conclusion of the novel, Shori decides to spend several years with the Braithwaite family to learn what it means to be a female Ina.77 Shori’s bodily and psychic identities will forever be mediated by her amnesia, and the loss of her previous experience as Ina. Yet, this very loss strengthens her familial ties to her symbionts and allows her a more critical perspective on

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the Ina’s gender and race/species biases, a kind of agency ultimately denied Carmilla and Laura. If the genetic experiment that resulted in Shori’s darker skin is successful and her offspring carry her same racial and species characteristics, Shori could find herself as the matriarch of a new, more prosperous Ina community. Both Carmilla and Fledgling end with only indications of the potential for their central vampires’ transmission and reproduction. Shori is too young to mate even at the close of the novel, and so the reader can only speculate along with the Ina as to the future outcome. Carmilla is dead by the end of Le Fanu’s novel, and the likelihood of Laura rising from death as a vampire herself is only hinted at. Nonetheless, both texts gesture toward the empowering intersections of race, gender, and sexuality as embodied in female vampires who reframe domestic spaces, in contrast to the traditional male, heteronormative vampire cast in the vein of Count Dracula and others. It is this stunning potential that makes the vampire narrative a continued site of fascination, and an exceptionally rich vehicle to embody, quite literally, a wide range of social and political fears. To this end, early vampire narratives use the exchange of blood to evoke the Protestant critique of Catholic transubstantiation, and explore fears of political and social reprisals. A nineteenthcentury creation, Carmilla challenges heteronormativity, but quivers over national invasion, while the twenty-first-century Fledgling overturns the fear of racial intermixing. Still, other modern vampire narratives tackle the AIDS epidemic and blood-born infection.78 Unfortunately, however, recent additions to the vampire genre have been little more than disappointing teen melodramas that reinscribe the female protagonist as the pitifully weak yet desirable trophy fought over by hegemonic males. This includes Stephanie Meyer’s series of novels The Twilight Saga (2005–2008) and its film adaptations (2008–2012),79 as well as television shows The Vampire Diaries (2009–2017)80 and The Originals (2013– present),81 both of which were also adapted from young adult novels.82 Still, fans of the modern vampire have an opportunity to build upon what Le Fanu and Butler began, and continue forward in mobilizing the archetype in new and critical ways. As Spike from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series reminds us, “Blood is life . . . It’s what keeps you going. Makes you warm. Makes you hard. Makes you other than dead.”83 As this chapter has shown, the vampire narrative can challenge gender and racial stereotypes through feminist critiques of heteronormativity and ableism, as well as socially constructed differences illustrated through myths of hemo-purity and blood-mixing, nationhood, and family structure. The vampire can also confront social issues that continue to plague us, such as enduring class inequities, and the sexual predation and rape culture being re-



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vealed through the expansion of the #MeToo movement, as well as the White privilege being challenged by the activist discourses of #BlackLivesMatter. With roots in Western societal critique and public discourse, the centuries-old vampire is at its most potent when it engages with all of the power suggested by its preternatural origins. NOTES  1. John Polidori, The Vampyre; a Tale. 2004. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved September 25, 2018, from www.gutenberg.org/files/6087/6087-h/6087-h.htm.  2. Bram Stoker, Dracula. 2013. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved September 25, 2018, from www.gutenberg.org/files/345/345-h/345-h.htm.   3.  Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla. In In a Glass Darkly, ed. Robert Tracy (Oxford: Oxford Press, 2003), 243–319.   4.  Octavia E. Butler, Fledgling (New York: Warner Books, 2005).   5.  By “polyamorous” or “polyamory” I mean engaging in consensual, multiple, nonmonogamous relationships.  6. Carol A. Senf, The Vampire in 19th Century British Literature (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988), 20.   7.  Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal, eds., preface, Dracula (New York: Norton, 1997), xii.   8.  Auerbach and Skal, preface, xii.   9.  Auerbach and Skal, preface, xii. 10.  Here I mean a worldview that promotes heterosexuality as the preferred, superior, and normal sexual orientation, with all other possibilities considered deviant. 11.  Pansexuality indicates a sexuality that is not limited or inhibited with regard to gender expressions or sexual behaviors. 12.  Auerbach and Skal, preface, xii. 13.  Robert Tracy, “Undead, Unburied: Anglo-Ireland and the Predatory Past,” LIT 10 (2001): 14. 14.  Robert Tracy, ed., introduction, In a Glass Darkly (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), vii. 15.  Blood in vampire texts is already a multilayered symbol, meaning, as we’ve already seen, differentiations between religious affiliations, and national and ethnic identities, but also symbolic of the anxieties that those identities are vulnerable through exposure of contact, mixing, or contamination from other sources of “blood,” which is called miscegenation. Individual bodily integrity as well as national and ethnic security, as I’ll discuss later, is bound up in this symbol. 16.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 244. 17.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 245. 18.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 256. 19.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 244. 20.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 245.

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21.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 245. 22.  Tracy, “Undead,” 18. 23.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 272. 24.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 273. 25.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 273. 26.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 263. 27.  Tracy, “Undead,” 14. 28.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 266. 29.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 269. 30.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 245. 31.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 312. 32.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 289. 33.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 280. 34.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 282. 35.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 264. 36.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 274. 37.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 282. 38. Senf, Vampire in 19th Century Literature, 49. 39. Butler, Fledgling, 120. 40.  Some writers have not capitalized racial titles, so where they appear in quotes, I have left them as originally published. 41.  Margalit Fox, “Octavia E. Butler, Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 58,” New York Times, March 1, 2006. 42. DeWitt Douglas Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai, “A Memorial to Octavia E. Butler,” Science Fiction Studies 37, no. 3 (November 2010): 355. 43.  Kilgore and Samantrai, “A Memorial,” 356. 44. Butler, Fledgling, 66. 45. Butler, Fledgling, 162. 46. Butler, Fledgling, 148. 47.  Ali Brox, “‘Every Age Has the Vampire it Needs’: Octavia Butler’s Vampiric Vision in Fledgling,” Utopian Studies 19, no. 3 (2008): 395. 48. Butler, Fledgling, 173. 49.  Pickens’s article also adeptly navigates how disability intersects with race and gender. 50. Therí Pickens, “‘You’re Supposed to Be a Tall, Handsome, Fully Grown White Man’: Theorizing Race, Gender, and Disability in Octavia Butler’s Fledgling,” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disabilities Studies 8, no. 1 (2014): 39. 51.  Pickens, “You’re Supposed to Be,” 44. 52. Butler, Fledgling, 121. 53. Butler, Fledgling, 214. 54.  Pelim Kümbet, “A Posthuman Vampire-Human Intra-Action in Octavia Butler’s Fledgling,” Interactions 5, no. 1–2 (March 2016): 105. 55. Butler, Fledgling, 12. 56. Butler, Fledgling, 12.



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57. Butler, Fledgling, 172. 58. Butler, Fledgling, 37. 59. Butler, Fledgling, 63. 60. Butler, Fledgling, 209. 61. Butler, Fledgling, 270. 62.  Brox, “Every Age,” 393. 63.  Patricia Hill Collins, From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2006), 56. 64. Collins, From Black Power, 57. 65. Collins, From Black Power, 58. 66. Butler, Fledgling, 143. 67. Butler, Fledgling, 74. 68.  Kümbet, “A Posthuman,” 108. 69. Butler, Fledgling, 309. 70.  Tamar Heller, “The Vampire in the House: Hysteria, Female Sexuality, and Female Knowledge in Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla,’” in The New Nineteenth Century: Feminist Readings of Underread Victorian Fiction, eds. Barbara Leah Harman and Susan Meyer (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996), 90. 71.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 243. 72.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 265. 73.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 316. 74.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 318. 75.  Le Fanu, Carmilla, 291. 76.  Brox, “Every Age,” 404. 77. Butler, Fledgling, 310. 78. See examples like Califia’s “Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow” (1996) and Charles’s “Cinnamon Roses” (2012). 79.  Twilight, directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Santa Monica, CA: Summit Entertainment, 2008–2012). Film. 80.  The Vampire Diaries, directed by Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson (Los Angeles, CA: Warner Brothers, 2009–2017). Television series. 81.  The Originals, directed by Julie Plec (Los Angeles, CA: Warner Brothers, 2013–present). Television series. 82.  L. J. Smith, The Vampire Diaries (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1991). 83.  “The Gift,” Buffy the Vampire Slayer, directed by Joss Whedon (Los Angeles, CA: 20th Century Fox, 2001). Television series.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Auerbach, Nina, and David J. Skal. Preface. Dracula. New York, NY: Norton, 1997. Brox, Ali. “Every Age Has the Vampire it Needs: Octavia Butler’s Vampiric Vision in Fledgling.” Utopian Studies 9, no. 3. (2008): 391–409. Butler, Octavia E. Fledgling. New York, NY: Warner Books, 2005.

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Califia, Patrick. “Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow.” In Sons of Darkness: Tales of Men, Blood and Immortality, edited by Michael Rowe and Thomas S. Roche, 146–96. Pittsburgh, PA: Cleis Press, 1996. Charles, Renee M. “Cinnamon Roses.” In Blood Kiss: Vampire Erotica, edited by Cecilia Tan, 19–42. Cambridge, MA: Circlet Press, 2012. Collins, Patricia Hill. From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2006. Fox, Margalit. “Octavia E. Butler, Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 58.” The New York Times, March 1, 2006. Hardwicke, Catherine, dir. Twilight. Santa Monica, CA: Summit Entertainment, 2008–2012. Film. Heller, Tamar. “The Vampire in the House: Hysteria, Female Sexuality, and Female Knowledge in Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla.’” In The New Nineteenth Century: Feminist Readings of Underread Victorian Fiction, edited by Barbara Leah Harman and Susan Meyer, 77–96. New York, NY: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996. Kilgore, DeWitt Douglas, and Ranu Samantrai. “A Memorial to Octavia E. Butler.” Science Fiction Studies 37, no. 3 (November 2010): 353–61. Kümbet, Pelin. “A Posthuman Vampire-Human Intra-Action in Octavia Butler’s Fledgling.” Interactions 5, no. 1–2 (March 2006): 105–12. Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan. Carmilla. In In a Glass Darkly, edited by Robert Tracy, 243–319. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Meyer, Stephenie. Twilight. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2005. Pickens, Therí. “‘You’re Supposed to Be a Tall, Handsome, Fully Grown White Man’: Theorizing Race, Gender, and Disability in Octavia Butler’s Fledgling.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disabilities Studies 8, no. 1. (2014): 33–48. Plec, Julie, dir. The Originals. Los Angeles, CA: Warner Brothers, 2013–present. Television series. Plec, Julie, and Kevin Williamson, dirs. The Vampire Diaries. Los Angeles, CA: Warner Brothers, 2009–2017. Television series. Polidori, John. The Vampyre. In The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre, edited by Robert Morrison and Chris Baldick, 3–23. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Senf, Carol A. The Vampire in 19th Century English Literature. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988. Smith, L. J. The Vampire Diaries. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1991. Stoker, Bram. Dracula, edited by Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal, 1–327. New York, NY: Norton, 1997. Tracy, Robert. Introduction. In a Glass Darkly. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. ———.“Undead, Unburied: Anglo-Ireland and the Predatory Past.” LIT 10 (2001): 13–33. Whedon, Joss, dir. “The Gift.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Los Angeles, CA: 20th Century Fox, 2001. Television series.

Chapter Six

Protest Bodies The Right to Protect Your Own in Environmental Justice and Redevelopment Battles Christina Jackson INTRODUCTION Over the past twenty years, residents of a San Francisco neighborhood located directly next to the once active Hunters Point U.S. Naval Shipyard have been fighting a long, uphill battle for their rights to breathe clean air and to not be pushed out of their homes. In particular, their battle has primarily concerned the remediation, or proper cleanup of the environmentally toxic Hunters Point shipyard, amplifying local tensions with the U.S. Navy’s Base Realignment and Closure program, shipyard investors, and the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. Labeled as a Superfund1 site, this World War II–era shipyard historically attracted a large population of African American workers to the city who were originally regarded as temporary laborers. However, with time, and along with other people of color, these workingclass communities deepened their roots in the neighborhood. Today, these intergenerational residents are experiencing the environmental racism of decades of delayed and fraudulent radiological cleanup and pollution from the shipyard. Their once temporary bodies, necessary to the shipyard’s wartime growth and production, are now constructed by special interests as deviant bodies. As a result of these residents’ active protest efforts against the redevelopment plans, or city-initiated renewal plans of their space, in collaboration with outside investors wanting to transform the shipyard into a new upscale commercial hub, they are viewed as deviant. As residents see it, the impact of this planned redevelopment is likely to contribute to what human ecologists, sociologists, and geographers call the growth machine, for its predicted exponential rise in local costs of living. This will conceivably

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Figure 6.1.  Environmental justice advocates protest at the Pacific Gas and Electric company (PG&E) in San Francisco, California. On this day in April 2010, they present PG&E with an Earth Day “Hall of Shame” award for its toxicities in the Bayview–Hunters Point neighborhood. Photo credit: Christina Jackson.

force these residents out of their homes, in the extension of an existing pattern of gentrification all throughout San Francisco and other metropolitan cities across the United States (Jackson 2018). During such processes of urban redevelopment, those low on the socioeconomic totem pole are pushed further and further away from the city’s geographical center. At the same time, much superficial effort on behalf of institutional programs, governmental offices, and corporate investors is publicized, giving the appearance of a fair, equitable, and safe remediation and redevelopment of the shipyard, especially in public meetings where residents and developers gather to voice their perspectives. Due to similar redevelopment processes across the United States, many residents also sense the superficiality of the community-institutional relationship for reasons relating to residents’ long-standing marginalization in urban spaces. In San Francisco, where the five-hundred-acre Hunters Point U.S. Naval shipyard is well publicized as the largest and most active redevelopment project in the city since its devastating 1906 earthquake, a similar process of redevelopment is well under way, with different corporations seeking to broker environmental



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cleanup in addition to rebuilding (Li 2018, Roberts 2018a, Jones and Yesko 2013, Brahinsky 2013). One of the largest home-building corporations involved in the Hunters Point project, Lennar,2 has put together a huge redevelopment plan for the space that includes expensive housing, commercial retail stores, and public green spaces (Dillon 2014; Brahinsky 2013). It is additionally subject to a fast-track process3 which would allow for both environmental cleanup and redevelopment to occur simultaneously. Crucially, neighborhood residents have voiced their distrust in Lennar’s plan and the associated process, particularly because of the documented falsification of environmental cleanup efforts by naval and corporate entities (Roberts 2018a,b). Local residents also have little faith that the city’s choice to fast-track the project will allow for thorough, community-involved review and the upholding of environmental cleanup standards. In truth, journalists revealed in 2018 that over 97 percent of the shipyard could be contaminated by radiological waste, even as redevelopment plans are ongoing (Roberts 2018b). However, this redevelopment process has been going on for more than eight years, and in 2010 I observed a number of local protests by residents who were already advocating for stronger accountability in the necessary cleanup efforts. Back in 2010, San Francisco residents were demanding a place at the decision-making table, among investors and other institutional stakeholders. Their protests marked their bodies as deviant, because they chose to go against town hall meeting rules to vocalize their sincere displeasure with the process and make their presence known. As an urban sociologist, I observed how rhetoric voiced by the city and other corporate stakeholders in the redevelopment process succeeded in labeling the bodies of Bayview–Hunters Point residents as deviant within public meetings with the U.S. Navy’s cleanup team and other shipyard investors. The discourse of these meetings facilitated the dismissal of these residents’ concerns, along with their hopes for rapid environmental cleanup, in favor of the construction of twelve thousand approved homes and four million square feet of commercial space (Li 2018). REDEVELOPMENT AND GENTRIFICATION IN BAYVIEW–HUNTERS POINT, SAN FRANCISCO Beginning in the 1940s, the local history of Black residents living in the Bayview–Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco has involved both strife and resistance. Those times were characterized by increased outside investment, rising property taxes, the closing down of mom-and-pop businesses, and an influx of White and upper-class residents into the space. Those

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changes can, in part, be understood as a San Franciscan story, because they were, and continue to reverberate throughout most areas of the city, including the Fillmore and Mission neighborhoods, where contemporary infiltration by well-paid Silicon Valley tech workers led to a 115 percent increase in evictions for longtime local residents in 2014 (Kloc 2014). Bayview–Hunters Point is no different. Where the previous economic and racial demographics of the neighborhood led to its ghettoization and disinvestment, Bayview– Hunters Point remains labeled as a ghetto, located in the most southeastern area of the city, furthest away from downtown San Francisco (Jones and Jackson 2011). Taking advantage of this legacy of urban marginalization, several forces have moved both behind the scenes and publically to transform the neighborhood and reenvision the space. In 2010, in my interview with sixty-two-year-old San Franciscan activist, Shirley, she recalled: “The third hand was always moving in the background, shifting. It’s like a chess game we were being outplayed on because we didn’t realize what the game was. So when you don’t know what the game is it’s easy to be shifted around.” In her own words, Shirley described with shrewd clarity her feelings of marginalization. At the same time that outside forces of change have had a huge effect on her longevity and quality of life, her shorter term fears relay her experience of living only steps from the Hunters Point shipyard. Living in such close proximity to the shipyard, residents have an average life expectancy that is fourteen years less than that of their counterparts living in quaint and wealthy Russian Hill, the location of the zigzagging Lombard Street, a popular tourist destination known as the “crookedest street in the world” (Bay Area Regional Health Inequities). Overall, the story of San Francisco is similar to the stories of renewal, displacement, and gentrification occurring within other highly redeveloped cities across the United States. Place matters; where you grow up will dictate the quality of the air you breathe, how clean your water is, and how welleducated you are. Shirley and other vulnerable residents in toxic and redeveloped neighborhoods essentially perceive themselves to be pawns within a larger political chess game regarding the future of their neighborhoods (Jackson 2018). They see themselves as pawns because of the limited access they have to being part of the process—the higher their socioeconomic status, the more freedom, value, and power they have to be a deciding factor in what the redeveloped neighborhood will look like. This dynamic can be seen most clearly in public meetings about neighborhood redevelopment and remediation. Pawns perform their relationship to city politics in ways that appear to be “inappropriate,” and therefore not legitimate, leading to their exclusion when compared to their middle- to upper-class counterparts who garner a more respected status and representation (Butler 2004). Bodies are subject



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to cultural standards for representation, but can also be a subject to be read. The performance of residents in public redevelopment meetings leads them to be further marginalized from the decision-making conversation of their neighborhood’s future. In March of 2017, Iris Canada died after being evicted from her home of more than thirty years. Canada was a one-hundred-year-old San Franciscan woman whose life and eventual death illustrate the dire urgency of housing and redevelopment struggles. A month after she was finally evicted, she passed away. When interviewed by The Guardian, her niece Iris Merion, described her aunt’s position, saying: “She just felt kind of thrown away . . . she was a person of dignity and pride, and she was not yelling and screaming. She was just simply saying, ‘I want to remain in my home’” (Levin 2017). Embodying the desire to stay put, or to be part of the conversation on their neighborhood’s future, as Canada did, represents a threat to the pre-established political and economic agendas that aim to grow the city. Representing very powerful subjects in political and economic debates on a city’s past, present, and future, bodies perform and shape public discourse. In this chapter, I use San Francisco as a case study to explore the ways that particular bodies are marginalized in the seemingly open and public process of urban development. I put forth the public redevelopment meeting as a site for meaning-making among working-class San Franciscans, as well as Black and Brown residents of the city. These are stakeholders without the same access to social capital as their upper-class counterparts, or that garnered by institutions involved in the redevelopment process. This means that the very residents who are most impacted by redevelopment plans are those who remain excluded from official channels of discussion on the remediation and future of gentrification in their neighborhood. Through a sociological focus on the protest body as a visual grammar, I reveal how the larger power dynamics of these redevelopment meetings aim to classify and categorize bodies in a bid to control the public image of the process while fast-tracking institutional aims. Using Ethnography to Map Vulnerability in Gentrified Neighborhoods Urban redevelopment negotiations and debates on gentrification are rich, yet contested sites for illuminating inequities among residents in their connections to neighborhood space and their ideal visions for the future (Patillo 2007). Residents routinely ask for more participation and transparency in the process of neighborhood redevelopment. In San Francisco, redevelopment amplifies tensions in renewing once predominately Black neighborhoods, particularly

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because the city’s Black population has seen its sharpest decline since 2010, with a loss of 22.6 percent. This decline in Black residents is precipitating faster than in any other large metropolitan city in the United States (Moore 2014). However, of the many communities that make up San Francisco, the city’s upper-class Black residents have had better success with remaining in the city, even as some have elected to move to other locations in the Bay Area. For low-income Black residents who remain, however, the reality of displacement or being “classed out” is a real concern for them in their daily lives. Most Black residents feel affected by this process, but low-income residents undoubtedly perceive themselves as more threatened and vulnerable because of their lack of social capital (Patillo 2007, Prince 2014). In my field research among city residents, I chose to use ethnographic methods of direct observation and participant observation as a means of investigating the many concerns of San Francisco residents, mapping out what vulnerability looks and feels like through my attendance of public redevelopment meetings, conversations with residents, and walks in the neighborhood. I originally journeyed to San Francisco in 2008 to study the residential impact of the 2007 African-American Out Migration Task Force, an institutional body concerned with raising the quality of life of Black residents. The task force was also committed to reversing the outward migration of Blacks forced out of the city by rising costs of living. Between 2008 and 2010, I spent time living in the city and making repeated visits to attend redevelopment meetings pertaining to the Black community’s stability. While conducting interviews and observing in those meetings, I noticed how working-class Black and Brown people described themselves as pawns, or as separate from where the “real” decision-making was taking place (Jackson 2010, Jackson 2014). My analysis included review of formal interviews and field notes gathered during direct meeting observations and informal conversations, as well as close reading of official documents (for example, meeting agendas, formal U.S. Navy documentation, etc.). Later, as I began to review my notes, I could see how activity I observed during my fieldwork could help to explain how community members interacted with institutional representatives during city and community meetings on redevelopment. A Turn to the Body in the City’s Political-Economic Landscape While attending public redevelopment meetings, I witnessed Black and Brown San Franciscans frustrated with the bureaucratic formality of the discussions. The expression of this frustration through talk, gestures, and other body movements marked them as rule-breakers seen by other non-Black residents and



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Navy officials as “always dissatisfied.” Although posing as egalitarian and inclusive, these meetings succeeded in further marginalizing poor Black and Brown residents who had only the use of their bodies and personal memories of the neighborhood to defend the future of their space and their lives. As sociologists Steve Kroll-Smith and H. Hugh Floyd assert in their Bodies in Protest: Environmental Illness and the Struggle over Medical Knowledge: “. . . Bodies do not talk, of course. We do. But bodies make noises, tremble, break, change shapes, and act in unusual ways. In short, our bodies invite, if not demand, someone to speak for them” (1997: 7). Given that middle- to upperclass Black San Franciscans are invited to formal channels for discussion on redevelopment and gentrification, while their poor counterparts are not, the latter engage public meetings as sites where their bodies can speak for them. During such meetings, these residents literally perceive themselves to be on the front lines of saving their neighborhood (Figure 6.1). Acting in these ways, residents are met with a power struggle at the most micro-level, which marks their bodies as “inappropriate.” These marginalized residents use what they have to advocate for themselves. Performing dissent in ways not complicit with the political-economic agendas of shipyard special interests furthers the sidelining of these residents. Their protesting bodies are dismissed in ways that make clear how their concerns are bound within rules and prohibitions that dictate (ideally) complicit behavior. In the public discourse of these meetings, residents’ behavior becomes the focus, rather than the larger political economic agenda that defines what behaviors are appropriate and who stands to benefit most from city redevelopment initiatives. In their battle with institutional authorities, local residents’ bodies exist in a field of power, through which their productivity, value, and usefulness are constantly defined by the political and economic concerns of an empowered elite (Foucault 1975). Philosopher and historian Michel Foucault explores the relationship between bodies and institutions in his books Discipline and Punish and The Birth of the Clinic. His framework explains how the political economic interests of institutional stakeholders are used to determine a new relationship between the body, public space, and institutional power within society (Driver 1985). This relationship captures community bodies within a realm of power relations, using rules and prohibitions. As Foucault has stated: But the punishment-body relation is not the same as it was in the torture during public executions. The body now serves as an instrument of intermediary . . . The body according to this penalty is caught up in a system of constraints and privations, obligations and prohibitions. Physical pain, the pain of the body itself, is no longer the constituent element of the penalty (1975: 11).

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Not pain, but obligations, prohibitions, and rules control bodies across urban policies dictating the formality of interactions between city officials, law enforcement officers, and community residents (Roy and Jones 2014). This more hidden form of penalization contributes to some Black San Franciscans’ perceptions of being under attack, which leads to their social and political disengagement. In these ways, the consequences for bodies are real (Jackson and Jones 2012, Jackson 2014, Jackson 2018). As I observed in San Francisco, attempts by local protesters to subvert discussions during neighborhood town halls are countered through containment strategies on the part of institutional representatives. With a view toward the environmental conservation planning taking place in Belize, sociologist Roger Few observes similar, top-down processes of containing community input. Few describes how planners in Belize aim to sustain a “constructed image,” or public transcript, of the planning process. This attempts to construct planning as inclusive, despite conscious efforts on the part of institutions to engage local residents only insofar as it fits within their timeline for completion of the project (Few 2001). These methods of containment include avoidance, exclusion, and control over procedure and knowledge, which is accomplished through the formal moderation of meetings, the prior setting of agendas, and the taking of formal surveys (Few 2001). During such meetings, public comment is regulated and agendas are strictly enforced as ways of undermining the meeting’s appeal as a site for voicing comment and concern. This means that from an institutional perspective, the success of a public redevelopment meeting is judged by the degree to which planners can contain residents’ concerns. My field notes illustrate how low-income residents’ voices, narratives, interruptions, and groupness, in addition to gendered expectations of behavior, are deployed in an attempt to subvert the nature of redevelopment meetings concerning the Hunters Point Naval shipyard in San Francisco. Findings During my time in San Francisco, I attended several town hall meetings in which community residents displayed tactics of resistance. Meeting attendees were mostly middle-aged and older, working-class Black, Latinx, Asian, and Pacific Islander community residents. Acting as leaders in their protest efforts were community groups of Christian, Muslim, and non-religious residents who organized around the poor health quality experienced in Bayview–Hunters Point, the most toxic neighborhood of the city due to the radiological materials historically used at the nearby shipyard. Describing how their families had been poisoned and displaced for the last thirty-six years, residents staked their claim in these meetings through the use of personal narrative testimony



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and resistance to meeting formality. Their collective narrative characterized the typical resident as having an environmentally ill body. This mounted a challenge to institutional hegemony that expressed frustrations about being exposed to a well-documented, highly toxic environment, and amplified discontent with their lack of input on what the redeveloped shipyard will look like (Kroll-Smith 1997: 189). Masculinity: Groupness, Voice, and “Manned” Spaces In a series of meetings, I observed that security guards and police officers were present and their numbers continued to increase as the year went on. These officers and guards “manned” these spaces. Residents remarked during meetings that the presence of officers was scaring off some low-income residents from attending. I felt similarly intimidated when I entered a building to attend an evening community forum regarding the shipyard. I wrote contemporary field notes of my impressions of that event in April 2010: This building was filled with younger neighborhood children and parents. I noticed that there were a lot of officers present. I assumed the meeting wasn’t in there, but after I circled the YMCA, I realized that it was the meeting. This caught me off guard, but also clued me into how severe this issue has gotten where the Navy feels so threatened by community members that they had to bring extra police officers. They made me feel somewhat intimidated to even go in the room.

Even as a temporary resident of the neighborhood, the space of this YMCA meeting room protected by police officers was intimidating. Within the meeting space, community residents reacted to the increased police presence by asserting Black masculinity, and representing Black participants as willing to protect one another from police (Hill Collins 2004). Importantly, the police officers and security staffing these public meetings were largely White males. Acting as the protectors of their interfaith community, Black leaders made their presence known and heard as they entered these meeting spaces. By standing up in the back of the meeting room for the duration of presentations and discussion, they put themselves on the same physical level of those in charge, and offered a visible challenge to the hegemonic White masculinity of the official security presence. I witnessed this activity at one particular meeting I attended: As I sat, more Black community members that I recognized came in the back and sat down. They came in with their whole squad of TOCB [Taking Our Community Back]4 and the brothers from the Nation of Islam. They were all dressed very formally and looked somewhat serious as they searched for familiar faces.

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I recognized a couple of them and I shook their hands and gave a smile. They greeted those they knew in a regular voice as opposed to trying to be quieter as the meeting continued on. I noticed in the beginning that the police officers were sitting down in the row behind me. When TOCB and the Nation of Islam brothers came in, male police officers got up and stood on the outskirts of the room. Some members of the incoming group sat, but by the end of the meeting all the men were all standing up against the wall in the back. They made a very dominant presence and stood shoulder to shoulder mostly in dark colors. Some community members with the group paced or walked around handing out an article from the BVHP [Bayview–Hunters Point] newspaper. They acted very much like a group as they wrote notes to each other, did some whispering but also had discussions in regular voices. It seemed as if the group was being purposefully not conforming to the agenda and format of the meeting, as they felt two minutes was not enough for public comment about a shipyard that has been endangering their lives for over 40 years.

At this particular meeting, brothers (Black Muslim men known to each other) from Taking Our Community Back and the Nation of Islam established their presence through late arrival, facial expressions, loudness, and other markers of groupness, including where and how they chose to stand in the meeting space. These were tactics used in an attempt to bring the redevelopment meeting back under the control of local residents despite the meeting agenda previously agreed upon by representatives from the navy, city, and participating corporations. Next, I noticed as police officers became more watchful when these Black male leaders came into the meeting space. Nothing was exchanged in audible words, but brothers from Taking Our Community Back and the Nation of Islam mirrored the paternalism of the police by standing up in the rear of the room, side by side, in a stance that represented a powerful securing force for their community. By standing in the back of the meeting room, like police officers, these brothers possessed an authoritative vantage point on what was occuring in the space. Their upright stance was subsequently mirrored by navy representatives leading these meetings, who also stood up when they wanted to reestablish order, after several attendees (local residents) were seen to have spoken out of turn. Voices, Narratives, and Interruptions: Subverting Formality in Discussion Since older women residents were generally viewed as less physically intimidating than men, women leaders chose to use the meeting as a space for voicing their narrative testimony, through interruptions of talk by institutional representatives. This was behavior I observed and annotated in my field notes.



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John was a navy representative responsible for supervising the cleanup of the neighborhood shipyard, and Ms. Bessie Johnson (who has since passed away) was a longtime community resident who had been fighting for a more inclusive conversation on the cleanup and redevelopment process. John explains that the community will help the Navy by commenting on the questionnaire by March via email. John explains, “diversity is very important in this community, not just by race” and further explains that they haven’t been “successful at reaching certain parts of the community.” Ms. Johnson raises her hand, and John says, “hold on a second, Ms. Johnson.” John adamantly says, “review this questionnaire! Form an opinion on this!” Several minutes pass. Ms. Johnson says, “I had my hand up.” She asks, “Who is selecting people who are doing like the board5 was doing?” John replies, “I think there was a focus group.” Another resident clarifies the question for John and says “What (or who?) initiated the meeting for this questionnaire?” As the room got a bit rowdier, residents kept asking about the advisory board. Many asked “why was it abandoned?” John says, “some questions I can’t answer.” Someone interrupts, and he says “excuse me, sir. . . . you should have received a letter about why it was dissolved.” A resident said, “it was abruptly abandoned in a legal way . . . what is the purpose for this? Will you disband this meeting when the community speaks out?” The man continues to say “you should have took a survey before you banned it!” John says, “I understand that you disagree with why the Navy dissolved the board.” Another resident replies, “I’m a little puzzled. The majority of the people here were on the advisory board, and other people here are not really from the community.” One White male resident urges John to throw out formality and let people just talk.

This excerpt from field notes made while I sat in attendance at the meeting illustrates how the navy representative, John, dictated the ways the community will be involved in the cleanup of the shipyard. He described surveys as a formal and bureaucratic way to collect the temperature of the community (i.e., an adequate way of documenting local perspectives), and actively displaced the concerns of residents present at the meeting. John claims two things: one, that racial diversity is not the most important issue, and two, that the navy had not formally received the feedback of other non-Black and Latinx residents. Through his talk at the meeting, John managed to displace the concerns of attendees who felt very differently about the conversation and the overall process. Feeling insulted, Ms. Johnson interrupted John to redirect the conversation by asking him about who created the idea for a survey/questionnaire and why the community advisory board was disbanded. Speaking the way she did, Ms. Johnson drew attention to the concerns of residents, asserting how the advisory board was a decision-making body residents were comfortable with.

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However, according to the navy’s official dissolution letter of that decisionmaking body, meetings of the advisory board were labeled as unproductive (Department of Navy dissolution letter, 2009). The navy subsequently disbanded the community advisory board, in a move that enraged residents. The dissolution of the community advisory board by the navy characterized residents as disobedient to proper meeting protocol. This classification of the behavior of community residents as inappropriate and therefore deviant helped to legitimize the navy’s rationale for shutting down the advisory board, all of which indirectly dismissed residents’ concerns. The exchange between Ms. Bessie Johnson and John, the navy representative, is especially meaningful. These moments from public meetings I attended illustrate how speaking out makes residents vulnerable to institutional power, instead of placing community concerns at the center of engagement with institutional representatives. According to the official letter detailing the dissolution of the advisory board, navy representatives measure meeting productivity by the manner in which agenda items are discussed, as well as the behavioral compliance of board members and attendees. The focus of these meetings was determined by navy representatives, not residents. The Limiting of Public Comment Redevelopment meetings for the Hunters Point shipyard typically followed a very particular agenda that included several presentations of scientific data about the ongoing environmental cleanup of toxic, radiological waste material. Near the conclusion of the typical meeting, the final agenda item would allow for a small window of public comment, and dictated that residents each have only two minutes to speak. Not surprisingly, residents were often noncompliant with this two-minute limit, and talked beyond their individually allotted time in order to bring up other issues they saw as connected to the shipyard’s development. As a result, their commentary was viewed by institutional stakeholders as unfocused and too long in its narrative styling. When a resident’s comments reached two minutes, moderators raised handheld signs indicating their time limit had been reached, and encouraged speakers to conclude their remarks. The excerpt below from my field notes describes one such scene of public comment: A prominent community figure passed a note around to residents stating: “Direct all your comments about shutting down the shipyard until BVHP [Bayview– Hunters Point] matters are taken care of.” After this, a series of community members went up for public comment. Some of the comments asked critically about the studies the Navy conducted, while others commented on the life of BVHP residents. People begin to lengthen their comments. A Black female Navy

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representative with locs was asked to mediate and shorten the commentary as she reminded the group that they specified this format for public comment earlier in the agenda. Prominent community leader, Evelyn, gets up to the microphone and says, “I’ve been a resident here, and I can’t believe you all are cutting people off! You are railroading this too fast for Evelyn Williams!” Police begin to walk around instead of sitting down.

From residents’ perspectives, the move by meeting moderators to cut them off, or curtail their remarks during the designated time for public comment is unfair. For residents, the limiting of public comment is belittling the importance of their neighborhood’s struggles with redevelopment and remediation. These residents perceive the speeding up of their commentary as an institutionalized tactic to bury their concerns, dismiss their stories, and control their bodies. On the part of residents, then, taking longer to speak during these timed agenda items is a form of resistance. Residents used these discussion periods as a time to publicly heal, openly reflect, and discuss potential solutions for the challenge of shipyard redevelopment and remediation. Implications Residents like Iris Canada, Shirley, Ms. Bessie Johnson, and Evelyn Williams of Bayview–Hunters Point and other rapidly gentrifying and redeveloping neighborhoods see themselves and their bodies as on the front lines of struggle. By demanding responsible cleanup of their toxic neighborhoods, and asking to remain in homes some have lived in for over thirty years, they request a different kind of decision-making process that embodies a threat to their city’s political and economic agenda. Even prior to the 2018 public release of documents verifying the falsification of environmental cleanup efforts at the Hunters Point shipyard, local residents had long suspected potential fraud in the process, and were openly demanding greater transparency and community involvement in deliberations. Unfortunately, and as they correctly predicted, their bodies were truly in legitimate danger. These mostly working-class San Francisco residents of color, vulnerable to the special interests of outside investors seeking to transform the naval shipyard, found public redevelopment meetings to be the most visible site of protest they were allowed to access. Even as these town hall meetings appeared to add desired transparency by constructing the redevelopment process as open and inclusive, these same meetings actually operated as a site of control. Not only were institutional representatives unwilling to adjust the format and design of meetings in response to community input, but their strategic decisions to uphold formality imposed expectations, rule, and prohibitions that legitimized particular participants while excluding others. My data additionally

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demonstrate that it was rare for a public meeting between institutional actors and community residents to come to consensus. Throughout the public town hall meetings I observed during my stays in San Francisco, I witnessed bodies rebelling against these formal restrictions, and using resources of space, time, movement, and narrative to redirect focus to local concerns, questions, and testimonies on the future of their neighborhoods. Importantly, the institutional response to community participants in these meetings revealed that local residents were viewed by outsiders as disobedient, deviant, inappropriate, and standing in the way of progress. In this way, it became increasingly acknowledged that public meetings held by representatives from the navy and city were also a performance designed to make residential insiders feel included, touting a seemingly open and publicly transparent planning process. On the part of community residents, embodied resistance through movement, language, and visible discontent became significant to the ongoing story of urban redevelopment in San Francisco, as tools these residents used to redirect the importance of one-way negotiations with institutional stakeholders. As we look toward the future of our cities, the planning of healthy and strong communities must go beyond predetermined redevelopment agendas and the institutionalized valuing of land through the growth machine. Residents will continue to fight for their livelihoods and for that of their children, in defense of their neighborhoods. Sociological attention to public redevelopment meetings allows a closer look at an important site of urban struggle, as it relates to complicated notions of what community involvement looks like. Learning from the San Francisco story, we can conclude that deviant and disobedient bodies are the ones we should be looking at and listening to, in order to ensure fair and just processes in neighborhoods across the nation. NOTES 1.  As determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, a Superfund site is on a list of the nation’s most environmentally toxic places that pose a significant risk to human and societal health. 2.  Lennar Corporation has taken a special interest in older, closed military bases for redevelopment. It has sought to redevelopment some of the “most contaminated brownfields in the country” (Dillon 2014). 3. Described by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1993, fast-tracking is a process of rapidly cleaning up identified areas of a toxic site for immediate reuse (https://www.epa.gov/fedfac/fast-track-cleanup-process-initiative-and-guidance).



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4.  Taking Our Community Back (TOCB) is a grassroots community group that organizes to take back control of their neighborhood. 5.  The advisory board was a safe community decision-making group that was created for residents to review and reflect on U.S. Navy documentation with scientists elected by community residents. The advisory board was later disbanded by the navy, which justified this action on the grounds that its meetings were “not productive to effective discourse—rules of order are often not followed.” Ever since, the local community has been angered and wants the issue to be addressed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiatives. “Health Inequities in the Bay Area.” Accessed June 18, 2018. http://barhii.org/resources/health-inequities-in -the-bay-area/. Brahinsky, Rachel. “Race and Development in Southeast San Francisco.” Antipode 46, no 5 (2013): 1–19. Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. New York, NY: Routledge, 2004. Crossley, Nick. “Body-Subject/ Body-Power: Agency, Inscription and Control in Foucault and Merleau-Ponty.” Body Society 2, no 2 (1996): 99–116. Department of the Navy. “Recommendation to Dissolve the Hunters Point Restoration Advisory Board.” Base Realignment and Closure Program Management Office West. Accessed June 18, 2018. https://www.bracpmo.navy.mil/content/dam/ bracpmo/california/former_naval_shipyard_hunters_point/pdfs/all_documents/ public_notices/HP_RAB_01SEP09.pdf. Dillon, Lindsey. “Race, Waste, and Space: Brownfield Redevelopment and Environmental Justice at the Hunters Point Shipyard.” Antipode 46, no 5 (2014): 1205–1221. Driver, F. “Power, Space, and the Body: A Critical Assessment of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 3 (1985): 425–446. Few, Roger. “Containment and Counter-Containment: Planner/Community Relations in Conservation Planning.” The Geographic Journal 167, no 2 (June 2001): 111–124. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1975. Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic: The Archaeology of Medical Perception. London: Tailstock Publications Ltd., 1973. Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism. New York: Routledge, 2004. Jackson, Christina. “The Effect of Urban Renewal on Fragmented Social and Political Engagement in Urban Environments.” Journal of Urban Affairs (2018). https://doi .org/10.1080/07352166.2018.1478225.

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———. “Black San Francisco: The Politics of Race and Space in the City.” Doctoral dissertation, University of California Santa Barbara, 2014. Jackson, Christina, and Nikki Jones. “Remember the Fillmore: The Lingering History of Urban Renewal in Black San Francisco.” In Black California Dreamin’: The Crises of California’s African-American Communities, edited by Ingrid Banks, Gaye Johnson, George Lipsitz, Ula Taylor, Daniel Widener and Clyde Woods, 57–73. University of California Santa Barbara: Center for Black Studies Research, 2012. Jackson, Christina. “Black Flight from San Francisco: How Race, Community and Politics Shape Urban Policy.” Master’s thesis, University of California Santa Barbara, 2010. Jones, Nikki, and Christina Jackson. “‘You Just Don’t Go Down There’: Learning to Avoid the Ghetto in San Francisco.” In The Ghetto: Contemporary Global Issues and Controversies, edited by Ray Hutchinson and Bruce Haynes, 83–110. Boulder, CO: The Westview Press, 2011. Jones, Steven, and Parker Yesko. “Community Awaits Benefits as Lennar Finally Breaks Ground in Hunters Point.” San Francisco Bay Guardian. July 1, 2013. http://48hills.org/sfbgarchive/2013/07/01/community-awaits-benefits-lennar-finally -breaks-ground-hunters-point/. Accessed December 11, 2018. Kloc, Joe. “Tech Boom Forces A Ruthless Gentrification in San Francisco.” Newsweek. April 15, 2014. http://www.newsweek.com/2014/04/25/tech-boom-forces -ruthless-gentrification-san-francisco-248135.html. Accessed December 11, 2018. Kroll-Smith, Steve, and H. Hugh Floyd. Bodies in Protest: Environmental Illness and the Struggle over Medical Knowledge. New York: The New York University Press, 1997. Levin, Sam. “100-year-old San Francisco Woman Dies One Month After Losing Eviction Battle.” The Guardian. March 28, 2017. https://www.theguardian .com/us-news/2017/mar/28/san-francisco-100-year-old-eviction-iris-canada -dies?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other. Accessed December 11, 2018. Li, Roland. “The Shipyard, San Francisco’s Largest Development, Faces Years of Delay After Alleged Fake Soil Testing.” San Francisco Business Times. January 30, 2018. https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2018/01/30/shipyard -sf-development-soil-test-navy-fph-ttek.html. Accessed December 11, 2018. Moore, A. “9 Major Cities Experiencing a Shocking Level of Black Flight.” Atlantic Blackstar. October 28, 2014. http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/10/28/9-major -cities-experiencing-a-shocking-level-of-black-flight/3/. Accessed December 11, 2018. Patillo, Mary. Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2007. Prince, Sabiyha. African Americans and Gentrification in Washington, D.C.: Race, Class and Social Justice in the Nation’s Capital. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2014. Roberts, Chris. “Navy: Do-over of $250 Million Cleanup at Hunters Point Necessary.” Curbed San Francisco. January 31, 2018a. https://sf.curbed.com/2018/1/31/16956458/



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hunters-point-toxic-cleanup-navy-responds-san-francisco. Accessed December 11, 2018. ———. “Faked Cleanup at Hunter’s Point Shipyard Much Worse Than Navy Estimates.” Curbed San Francisco. April 10, 2018b. https://sf.curbed.com/ 2018/4/10/17219434/hunters-point-shipyard-navy-cleanup-san-francisco-faked. Accessed December 11, 2018. Roy, Kevin, and Nikki Jones, eds. Pathways to Adulthood for Disconnected Young Men in Low-Income Communities. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 143 (2014). Wiley Periodicals Inc. Scott, James. Domination and the Arts of Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.

Chapter Seven

Death and the Power of the Young Female Body Iconic Legal Cases Barry R. Furrow

Around the world, patients in iconic end-of-life legal cases represent more than judicial legal resolutions and statements of guidance to providers; these patients battle in an arena supercharged by conflict with doctors, the legal norms of their states and nations of residence, and the desires of their own families. While mired in the multiple and numerous challenges of debilitating and terminal illness, they are surrounded by others fighting to control their fates, even as they may themselves be lucid and competent but in need of pain management, or be minimally sustained by a ventilator (a machine that breathes for a patient), as they face the looming prospect of the withdrawal of care. In the United States, the particular attributes of these patients have made their stories, photographic images, and medical details iconic in the law and popular press. Where such patients are young women, the cultural centrality of their circumstances is further fueled by our sense of the terrible loss of them as attractive women of endless potential and childbearing age.1 The image of the body matters—body image colors conversations in the media, the hospital, and the funeral home. Across these contexts, we struggle with end-of-life issues, resisting death. The United States is commonly characterized as a death-denying society and perhaps this is why death, dying, and the dead occupy a prominent place in our popular culture. Over the years, the law has handled dilemmas of death and dying through a number of legal cases that have since become iconic or classic for their formative impact on the courts. These cases raise legal issues of who should decide when to stop all treatment and feeding if a patient is deemed to be in a persistent vegetative state; brain dead, and with little or no prospect of ever regaining cognitive function and competency; or terminally ill. This chapter will examine these iconic cases and the visual and political contexts in which 137

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they arose. Patients in these cases include Elizabeth Bouvia, a young White American woman and competent patient with terrible diseases whom the courts ultimately granted a right to refuse treatment; Karen Ann Quinlan, also White, a vegetative patient whom the state supreme court allowed to die rather than suffer; Nancy Cruzan, also White, another vegetative patient whose parents fought the state of Missouri and the U.S. Supreme Court to gain the right to pull the plug on her treatment; and Terri Schiavo, also White; along with other more recent cases of young women of color who have arguably become brain dead. This includes African American patient Jahi McMath, whose circumstances caught her within a political battle between the hospital’s claims and her parents’ wishes, as to whether and when to terminate her life support. The iconic cases start with Quinlan in 1976, blossom into Bouvia in 1986, continue with Cruzan in 1990 and Schiavo in 2005. During this threedecade-long period, roughly two dozen appellate cases pertained to end-oflife arguments, leading to a consensus about how they should be handled by the courts. Both state courts and the U.S. Supreme Court confronted the hard bioethical and legal questions of patient autonomy, persistent vegetative states and brain death, and who the decision maker should be and under what circumstances. The bioethics community has also taken a significant role in defining and debating the boundaries of patient maintenance in the event of unconscious states such as comas, persistent vegetative states, and total brain death.2 In this chapter, I will first examine judicial decision-making in the larger cultural context. Why these patients and these situations? What is it about the human attributes of these patients that made their cases central and their struggle so public? I will argue that a source of fuel for the intensity of debate is in fact the physical nature and appearance of these patients. The iconic cases in the courts to date center on mostly young White women in their twenties, whose embodiments trigger American society’s cultural sensitivity to a favored group of patients injured in tragic situations that have curtailed their life opportunities. Curiously, and by contrast, elderly sick patients don’t generally elicit our sympathy in the same way, since they have already lived out their lives and their departure does not seem as wasteful or tragic. Arguably, it is this sense of tragic loss that draws us to the images of these young women in particular. Altogether, these multiple factors contribute to a politically charged environment of conflict over the end-of-life treatment of young women patients. The resulting public discourse is greatly impacted by media coverage. Second, I will look more closely at the depiction of these young patients and what they embody in U.S. society. These patients—once healthy and vibrant3—are, over the course of their medically prolonged lives, gradually

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reduced to little more than warm vessels of tissues and organs kept alive usually by extraordinary means. But their status as young valued women, with all that lost potential for living, foments a sense of profound loss. As a result, the patient’s family, the state, and health care providers may all fight to force continued treatment, while others want treatment stopped. And media loves a battle, with an attractive figure in the middle of a conflict, which can be recycled endlessly to gain increasing readership or viewership. Third, I will look at these iconic cases through the lens of gender and race. Given unfortunate histories of patient abuse and omission of informed consent by the biomedical establishment, some people of color justifiably distrust biomedicine and fear that they might be pushed toward death by White health care providers more rapidly than would White patients. Several recent legal cases involve young women of color, reduced to persistent vegetative states by potentially inadequate medical treatment; their parents fight against any cessation of life-sustaining treatment. DEATH AND DYING: THE EVOLUTION OF MEDICINE. . . . AND LAW4 Death at Home Dying used to be normal (and sometimes welcome); a familiar part of life. People aged, they got sick, they became bedridden, and finally, they died at home surrounded by family. In rural America death was familiar. As a young boy in the 1950s, I often took my place as a pallbearer alongside my older male cousins, carrying the caskets of deceased grandparents, aunts, and uncles during funeral rites in the close-knit rural community in South Dakota where my extended family lived. Later, as medicine improved we came to expect more of doctors, insisting that they get a grip on death. Death slowly became the enemy instead of the norm for the ill person. Medical progress and public health interventions like vaccines extended the American life span. As one commentator noted, “[a]n American baby born at the turn of the century had about a 40% chance of reaching his or her sixtieth birthday, but by the early 1950s it was roughly 70%.”5 Death became medicalized in the hospital, requiring explicit medical intervention to stop a patient’s life-sustaining treatment,6 the cumulative effect of which was an attempt to deny death. Once thus domesticated, death became dangerous, to be avoided as long as possible. Death went from familiar to, in sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s words, “. . . indecent, wild, dangerous, dirty, and polluting.”7

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Competent Control of Dying With the expanded ability of biomedicine to extend and sustain the life of the patient, conflicts over control of the timing of one’s death and the right to terminate treatment began to arise. The first legal issue to arise was whether a competent person could ask health care providers to help her die. Patients in those early cases typically required third-party support by physicians to help the competent patient die. The courts were required to decide the limits of individual power for an individual to obtain assistance in committing suicide. Later, patients and others petitioned state legislatures to pass legislation in an attempt to legalize physician-assisted suicide. Dr. Jack Kevorkian became famously known as “Doctor Death”8 for his efforts on behalf of people with incurable diseases who wished to die on their own terms and at the time they themselves decided.9 Over his lifetime, Kevorkian helped some 130 sick patients to end their lives starting in 1990. He defied state criminal laws and prosecutors to help patients die, and he ended up spending eight years in prison after being convicted of second-degree murder in the death of the final patient he assisted. All throughout, however, Kevorkian was effective in highlighting the need for patients in many situations to have medical help in dying. But one doctor who was willing to help patients was not enough to meet the demands of others all over the United States who wanted to end their suffering with medical help. As Andrew Solomon, a novelist and son to one of Kevorkian’s patients, has noted: [F]or most people, however, assisted suicide remains difficult and expensive and requires the ability to machinate around medical standards and the law. This very day, people are suffering fruitless pain at the end of long illness, and dreaming of escape; others are sitting beside them, helpless to give them a peaceful exit. Denying people the integrity of their own lives denies them the integrity of their own bodies.10

The legal counter to the criminalization of physician-assisted suicide was to convince state legislatures to legalize it. Brittany Maynard was a perfect icon: young, White, attractive, well-spoken, and dying of a brain tumor. Though she was not at the center of an iconic law case, she nevertheless became an effective poster child of legislative lobbying for California’s assisted-suicide movement. Maynard’s cancer was diagnosed on the first day of 2014. Though she had surgery to remove the tumor, it later returned in April of that year. A few months later, she moved from San Francisco to Oregon and partnered with Compassion & Choices—the successor to the pro-euthanasia Hemlock Society—to create a six-minute video explaining why she wanted the right to control the time and manner of her death. Her video has since been viewed



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online nearly twelve million times. On November 1 of that same year, she took the pills she had been legally prescribed in Oregon, where it was already legal to obtain medical prescriptions for self-administered lethal applications, and died in 2014 at the age of twenty-nine.11 Before her chosen death, Maynard became the spokesperson for legislation proposed to legalize California’s Death With Dignity Act. She made frequent public statements, becoming a forceful and appealing advocate for physicianassisted suicide in California. The accompanying media campaign circulated her youthful images, using the terrible sense of her imminent death and the waste it implied for a newly married, young White woman, to build support for the proposed California legislation. Maynard died an iconic representative for the assisted-suicide movement, continuing its tradition of being typically dominated by well-off, educated middle- to upper middle-class patients accustomed to taking ownership of their health care.12 Technology and Patient Loss of Control Over the years, as biomedicine became more able to sustain and prolong life, death with dignity became the goal and Americans came to fear being kept alive in a hospital as little more than a “vegetable.” Many felt that such circumstances could force their families into expensive and emotionally unpleasant states of coping. Emergency treatment became the norm, starting with the “9-1-1” response system, instituted in 1968. People in crisis began to increasingly end up in hospitals, brought in by ambulances responding to 9-1-1 calls. By the late 1960s, “crash carts”—hospital resuscitation tools that allowed hospital staff to bring patients back from a stopped heart and keep them alive by “extraordinary” measures—rapidly became the standard of care in Western biomedicine. This was medicine that had evolved from defining death through tests of breaching and heart pumping, to locating notions of brain death not just in those without brain function, but in those who were in a persistent vegetative state. These nuanced pronouncements of death crossed over the line that had previously marked death. The case of Karen Ann Quinlan, in particular, pitted family desires to let a loved one complete her dying against the anxieties and desires of the medical profession. The public began to desire to control their own dying process and that of their family members. Quinlan began the cultural pushback against prolonged dying. The Courts as a Battleground Control of the right to die, or to allow a third person to die in the hospital, is at times highly contested. The U.S. courts have provided the location for such

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battles, and for good reason. The battle begins when a person is in a health care institution or long-term care facility; people die all the time at home, out of the control and sight of medical institutions. But once in the hospital, the issue becomes more complicated—parents of daughters in the iconic cases want to allow their brain-damaged daughter to die (Quinlan and Cruzan); parents want their daughter to live (Schiavo) in opposition to a husband guardian; a competent patient wants to stop treatment, even though it will ultimately lead to her death (Bouvia). Over the last few decades, the law has been regularly invoked by physicians and other health care providers concerned about the ethical, legal, and medical propriety of discontinuing what is now generally referred to as “lifesustaining treatment.” Some of the questions that families and health care providers have asked courts or legislatures to clarify are arguably outside the competence of the law. Consider, for example, what constitutes a “terminal illness.” Classifying a patient as “terminally ill” requires understanding the patient’s medical condition and the social, ethical, and legal consequences of the classification. If such a classification triggers a provision in an advance directive, or if it allows a physician to participate in aiding the patient’s dying, for example, it might be treated differently than if it solely necessitates the patient’s relocation from one room to another, more appropriate unit within a hospital. The difficulties in allocating decision-making authority and developing guiding principles are not limited to the “terminal illness” classification. The same is true for “comas,” “persistent vegetative states,” and even “total brain death.” These categories are all complicated hybrid medical, ethical, social, political, and legal determinations.13 Accordingly, the courts and decision makers struggle with tough questions. Where is the locus of appropriate decision-making? Should the decision be made by health care professionals alone? By a patient and her family? By a hospital ethics committee? By some external committee? By a court-appointed guardian? By the court itself? By the state legislature? By Congress? Finally, what should be the source of principles that ought to govern the decision maker—medicine, ethics, religion? As these issues have come before the courts over the past few decades, the courts have looked both to the traditions of the common law—as incrementally developed by state court judges—and the traditions of ethics and medicine to discover principles for decision-making. In turn, resulting judicial decisions have often created the foundation for new ethical and medical approaches. Today, the debate over appropriate ethical policy in determining when lifesustaining treatment should be initiated or discontinued, and over whether physicians should be permitted to aid in the death of a patient, now involves



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lawyers just as much as it does bioethics scholars, and the public debates on these issues have centered on the judicial resolution of cases as much as any other source of formal principles. The law is not merely looking to ethics for potential methods of analysis, it has become a partner with ethics in deciding these issues. Politicization of Dying The early cases like Quinlan and Bouvia often involved physician and hospital worries about their criminal and civil liability exposure if they let patients die. By contrast, cases like Cruzan and Schiavo involved highly charged political and ideological environments, where the damaged central character, the young woman patient, presented attributes useful to both the media and to the litigants in constructing sympathetic points of view and eliciting strong public reactions. Extreme “pro-life” groups rallied around patients, representing the position that a life should be preserved at any cost. Theirs remains an extreme vitalist position grounded in religious beliefs.14 Further, recent cases involving young women of color represent family beliefs that medical standards such as brain death, when applied by health care providers, cannot always be trusted. As it turns out, the photographic and stylized images of these patients, circulated by the media and used to generate attention, fuel conflict, but may also help courts and concerned parties to better understand and empathize with end-of-life struggles. IMAGES OF DEATH: THE ICONIC CASES Patient Autonomy and the Right of a Competent Patient to Refuse Medical Treatment: Elizabeth Bouvia15 Elizabeth Bouvia, a patient in a Riverside, California, public hospital, wanted the removal of her nasogastric tube and went to court to compel the hospital to allow its removal. Having been diagnosed with severe cerebral palsy as a quadriplegic, the severity of her situation had resulted in her being completely bedridden, immobile, helpless, and wholly unable to care for herself. To provide Bouvia with life-sustaining nutrition, the hospital had inserted a nasogastric tube into her and maintained it against her will and without her consent, forcing her to endure forced feeding. She was, in the court’s words, “. . . physically helpless and wholly unable to care for herself [. . .] She suffers also from degenerative and severely crippling arthritis. She is in continual pain.”

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Figure 7.1.  In 1986, when Elizabeth Bouvia was twenty-eight years old, doctors complied with a court order to remove the force-feeding tube that was in place. The court’s decision stated that it was Bouvia’s right to refuse medical treatment, even if her refusal were to lead to a life-threatening condition. © Getty Images

A key image of Elizabeth Bouvia circulated at the height of her public prominence depicted a young woman immobile in a wheelchair, with bent, birdlike hands (see Figure 7.1). Bouvia appears alert, intelligent, and utterly competent, albeit in constant pain. Such an image encourages viewers to see themselves in her position, and to contemplate how they might like to control their own lives, and the terms and conditions of their death. In Bouvia, the court also noted that her quality of life was of central value: “In Elizabeth Bouvia’s view, the quality of her life has been diminished to the point of hopelessness, uselessness, unenjoyability and frustration. She, as the patient, lying helplessly in bed, unable to care for herself, may consider her existence meaningless. She cannot be faulted for so concluding . . .” Though her request to starve herself (through removal of the feeding tube and refusal of food) was initially denied in a 1983 superior court decision, in 1986 the California state appeals court ultimately sided with Elizabeth Bouvia’s desire to forgo medical treatment or life



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support via mechanical means, ruling that the decision belonged to her. As the court stated: “It is not a medical decision for her physicians to make. Neither is it a legal question whose soundness is to be resolved by lawyers or judges. It is not a conditional right subject to approval by ethics committees or courts of law. It is a moral and philosophical decision that, being a competent adult, is hers alone.” Importantly, the appeals court recognized the right of competent individuals to refuse medical treatments, regardless of the ethical perspectives of their medical providers. The court further wrote: “Being competent she has the right to live out the remainder of her natural life in dignity and peace. It is precisely the aim and purpose of the many decisions upholding the withdrawal of life-support systems to accord and provide as large a measure of dignity, respect and comfort as possible to every patient for the remainder of his days, whatever be their number. This goal is not to hasten death, though its earlier arrival may be an expected and understood likelihood.” Once Bouvia gained her right to refuse further medical treatments, she decided not to refuse, and opted to live. By that time, she was twenty-eight years old, and in succeeding years she continued her hospitalization at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. She reportedly regained her health enough to enjoy solid food, and used medically supervised dosages of morphine to manage the pain of her disease. In 2008, she was still alive, and by some accounts continues living. For many, Bouvia’s landmark court case signals the importance of retaining the right to refuse treatment we find painful or unnecessary, as long as we possess competence, even if doing so should hasten our death, or we later change our minds and choose not to exercise that right. The principle articulated by California courts in Bouvia has since come to be a bedrock principle in patient rights. Family versus Provider Control: Karen Ann Quinlan16 In 1986, Bouvia established a judicially enforceable right of a competent individual to refuse forced medical treatments of any kind, even if such refusal would lead to death. The harder issue was presented by the earlier Quinlan case (1975–1976), with a patient no longer competent to make such decisions. When, for example, a patient is in a persistent vegetative state, unable to express her current wishes, and lacking any past documentation of her wishes, the question is whether the courts can step in to determine her wishes by substituting their judgment for hers. Karen Ann Quinlan (Figure 7.2) was twenty-one years old when she slipped into a coma at a New Jersey party in 1975.17 She had been on a crash diet. She became unconscious after she consumed diazepam, a tranquilizer,

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along with several gin and tonics. Afterward, Quinlan was taken to a hospital and placed on a ventilator. She lapsed into a coma, which became, in her physicians’ judgments, a persistent vegetative state. Several weeks passed without improvement of her condition. She was clearly uncomfortable with the ventilator’s forced breathing, and her parents decided to ask for her to be taken off of the ventilator to end what they saw as her pain. However, the hospital refused to do so, citing the concerns by treating physicians about their risk of liability for terminating her support and allowing her to die.18 This led the parents to go to court, and the case finally came before the New Jersey Supreme Court.19 The court concluded that the health care providers did not have the right to continue forced treatment. The court wrote: “No compelling interest of the state could compel Karen to endure the unendurable, only to vegetate a few measurable months with no realistic possibility of returning to any semblance of cognitive or sapient state.” Subsequent to the court’s ruling, Karen was removed from her respirator in 1976. When she did not die as expected, and instead began breathing on her own, she was moved to a nursing home, where she was cared for another nine years until her death in 1985. The changing images of Karen Ann Quinlan circulating in the media helped make her case one of national visibility. For many in the public, her high school portrait conveyed a sense of her wholesomeness.20 Quinlan began to be known as “Snow White,” as some newspapers called her, alongside descriptions of her as a brown-haired, hazel-eyed girl who was trapped like “Sleeping Beauty” in a coma state.21 This imagery gradually eroded, however, as her weight dropped from 115 to 75 pounds and her posture became “fetal” and “grotesque.” One neurologist who evaluated her testified in court that she was an “anencephalic monster.”22 As the visible state of Quinlan’s health declined in her publicly reFigure 7.2.  Karen Ann Quinlan as pictured leased images, so did public atin her high school yearbook photo before titudes. She had by then become a the onset of her medical crisis in 1975. medical ghost in the eyes of many,



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Figure 7.3.  Artist portrait of a hospitalized Karen Ann Quinlan in 1976. CC BY image courtesy of The Courtroom Sketches of Ida Libby Dengrove, University of Virginia Law Library.

imprisoned in a coma within a helpless body that had no remaining cognitive capacity; she was forcibly supported by medical technology (Figure 7.3). This final ghostly image haunted the public story of Quinlan, moving the New Jersey Supreme Court to clarify the limits on provider-imposed treatments for patients trapped by modern medicine. This stopped the hospital from forcing her to “endure the unendurable.”

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Family versus State Control: Nancy Cruzan23 Courts began to search for evidence of patient wishes to avoid having to substitute their judgment for that of the patient. At age twenty-five, in 1983, Nancy Cruzan suffered severe injuries sustained during an automobile accident, which threw her from her car, and left her face down in water for a significant period of time before paramedics were able to reach her. Cruzan was subsequently hospitalized, and years later, in 1988, after it became apparent that she had virtually no chance of recovering her cognitive faculties, her parents and co-guardians sought a court order directing the withdrawal of their daughter’s artificial feeding and hydration equipment. It had been determined that Cruzan was in a persistent vegetative state. However, the state of Missouri fought the court order, taking the position that only when “clear and convincing” evidence was presented as to Cruzan’s wishes regarding the continuation of life support could it then be withdrawn. The Supreme Court of Missouri agreed, holding that because there was no clear and convincing evidence of Nancy’s desire to have life-sustaining treatment withdrawn under such circumstances, her parents lacked authority to effectuate such a request. By 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court had agreed to hear the Cruzan case, the first right-to-die case the Court would hear. Ultimately, the Court upheld the state requirement that documentation of the wishes of the patient must meet the “clear and convincing” standard of evidence, an intermediate (and quite difficult) standard to satisfy. Crucially, the Court did uphold the earlier Bouvia principle that “. . . the United States Constitution would grant a competent person a constitutionally protected right to refuse lifesaving hydration and nutrition.” In Cruzan the Court further noted that while a competent person has the common law right to refuse medical treatment, “. . . an incompetent person is not able to make an informed and voluntary choice to exercise a hypothetical right to refuse treatment or any other right. Such a ‘right’ must be exercised for her, if at all, by some sort of surrogate.”24 The Court’s majority opinion was a step forward, acknowledging that either prior statements of wishes as to medical measures, or selection of a surrogate decision maker, would shift the right to decide from doctors to the patient. Regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s consideration of Cruzan, the image of the body first emerges explicitly in Justice Brennan’s dissent.25 He noted that: . . . [d]ying is personal. And it is profound. For many, the thought of an ignoble end, steeped in decay [Italics mine], is abhorrent. A quiet, proud death, bodily integrity intact [Italics mine], is a matter of extreme consequence. In certain, thankfully rare, circumstances the burden of maintaining the corporeal existence degrades the very humanity it was meant to serve. Such conditions are, for



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Figure 7.4.  Nancy Cruzan as pictured on December 25, 1990, the day before her final moments under medical care. Publicly available image from webpage “Nancy Cruzan: Nutrition and Hydration.”

many, humiliating to contemplate as is visiting a prolonged and anguished vigil on one’s parents, spouse, and children [Italics mine]. A long, drawn-out death can have a debilitating effect on family members. For some, the idea of being remembered in their persistent vegetative states rather than as they were before their illness or accident may be very disturbing [Italics mine].

In his dissenting opinion, Justice Brennan sees the body as central in two ways. First, it is central to the person’s own sense of a “good” death. Correspondingly, the image of a debilitated body creates an undesirable legacy of how people may be remembered in such situations. Justice Brennan’s opinion is most specific as to the image we may want others to remember, and the merits of a “quiet, proud death, bodily integrity intact.” A body “steeped in decay” is an “ignoble end”; a proud death is one with “bodily integrity intact.” Knowing that one will be remembered “in their persistent vegetative states” is disturbing. Second, to Justice Brennan, the decaying body debilitates family

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members. The nightmarish imagery of a shrunken, decaying body provides justification for a relaxed standard of proof regarding a patient’s wishes to have treatment stopped. Justice Brennan’s opinion draws attention to the image we want others to remember of us, that of a dignified death. Although the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s standard of clear and convincing evidence as to a patient’s end-of-life wishes, at a new Missouri state court hearing some time later, a friend of Nancy Cruzan came forward and testified as to Cruzan’s statements about her desires not to be kept alive as a vegetable. The court then ordered that feeding and hydration be stopped, and Nancy Cruzan died in 1990 (see Figure 7.4). Family Mistrust of Medical Science: Terri Schiavo26 and Jahi McMath Terri Schiavo The key death and dying cases, with the exception of Bouvia, involve young women who suffered loss of oxygen to the brain and were diagnosed with irreversible brain damage, ranging from the medical status of a persistent vegetative state to brain death. In 1990, Theresa “Terri” Marie Schindler Schiavo (Figure 7.5) suffered a cardiac arrest at the age of twenty-seven as a result of a potassium imbalance while at home in St. Petersburg, Florida. She was rushed to the hospital but never regained consciousness. Schiavo was then placed in nursing homes with constant care, where she was fed and hydrated by tubes, though she was determined to be in a permanent or persistent vegetative state. Her brain had deteriorated because of the lack of oxygen it suffered at the time of her heart attack. By mid-1996, CAT scans of her brain showed a severely abnormal structure with her cerebral cortex replaced by cerebral spinal fluid. The experts and the court together found that Terri Schiavo would always be in an unconscious, reflexive state, totally dependent upon others to feed her and care for her most basic and private needs. As her legal guardian, Terri’s husband wanted to stop any further treatment but her family opposed this. Over time, and as pro-life forces pushed hard to maintain Terri Schiavo on life support, the state of Florida and even the U.S. Congress became involved with this highly politicized case.27 The Court of Appeal concluded: In the final analysis, the difficult question that faced the trial court was whether Theresa Marie Schindler Schiavo, not after a few weeks in a coma, but after ten years in a persistent vegetative state that has robbed her of most of her cerebrum and all but the most instinctive of neurological functions, with no hope of a medical cure but with sufficient money and strength of body to live indefinitely,



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would choose to continue the constant nursing care and the supporting tubes in hopes that a miracle would somehow recreate her missing brain tissue, or whether she would wish to permit a natural death process to take its course and for her family members.

Key public images of Terri Schiavo are perhaps even more distressing than those circulated in media coverage of other female patients in highly publicized right-to-die cases because of the medicalized images of Schiavo’s brain. As a result of the circulation of these images, Schiavo went from being visible in the public eye as an attractive, young married woman (Figure 7.5), to a latter representation as a deteriorated version of her former self (Figure 7.6), a shrunken body—and we know that she suffered a destroyed, liquefied brain. Scans of Schiavo’s brain juxtaposed with a normal (undamaged) brain became part of the public imagery of her forced life.28 Through this media coverage, she became a symbol of a body without a brain, even as her parents and pro-life groups maintained that she was still meaningfully alive. For many, Schiavo was a ghost without sentience, and again, this publicized imagery of her condition gradually made the continuation of her life appear unbearable to both doctors and members of the public.

Figure 7.5.  A young Terri Schiavo prior to her cerebral deterioration. Photo publicly released by the Schiavo family.

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Figure 7.6.  Following medical declarations that Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state, home video was captured of her with members of her family, in an effort to depict her bodily movements and semblances of eye contact as evidence to the contrary. This still image, along with the video it was captured from, was widely circulated by the Schindler family to media outlets at the height of her court case. BOBBY SCHINDLER, I WILL NEVER FORGET THE LOOK OF HORROR ON MY SISTER TERRI SCHIAVO’S FACE THE DAY SHE DIED LIFENEWS.COM (2015), http://www.lifenews.com/2015/03/30/i-will-neverforget-the-look-of-horror-on-my-sister-terri-schiavosface-the-day-she-died.

Jahi McMath Like the case of Terri Schiavo, the case of Jahi McMath has been fought in civil courts by the patient’s parents over the meaning of brain death, a legal term used by neurologists to describe a patient whose brain is functionally destroyed, such that the patient will never return to consciousness. A braindead patient may be kept “alive” only by ventilation and nutrition/hydration support in a nursing home, hospital, or other adequately equipped facility. Though Jahi McMath’s status as brain-dead was originally confirmed by a lower court judge, her family continued to litigate the issue. In 2013, Jahi McMath was declared brain-dead by hospital doctors at Children’s Hospital in Oakland, California, after undergoing surgery to remove her tonsils when she was thirteen. Subsequent to the medical declaration,



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McMath’s mother refused to agree to her removal from life support and has since fought to have her death certificate rescinded. The McMath family later moved their daughter to New Jersey in 2014, the only state in the United States where families can reject a brain-death ruling for religious reasons. In March 2014, the Terri Schiavo Life and Hope Network awarded McMath’s family one of their foundation’s annual awards. The award recognized “the unconditional love they have for Jahi, and their courage as they continue the fight for their daughter against overwhelming odds.” McMath’s mother stated she was honored to receive the award and referred to her daughter as “still asleep,” clarifying that she does not use the phrase “brain-dead” to refer to her daughter.29 After viewing over four dozen independent videos of McMath, Dr. Alan Shewmon, a UCLA pediatric neurologist, declared her technically alive in a June 2017 court filing, stating that the young girl followed movement commands and exhibited other proof of life. With this court filing, some four years following declaration of Jahi McMath’s brain death, a California state court judge ruled in 2017 that McMath may not be brain-dead and allowed the parents to proceed to a jury trial.30 Children’s Hospital Oakland maintained, however, that their original diagnosis of brain death was correct and that the videos do not meet the diagnostic criteria for brain death.31 Though Jahi McMath succumbed to kidney and liver failure, and was accordingly removed from life support in June 2018, her family has plans to initiate a wrongful-death suit, and a federal civil rights case regarding her initial death certificate issued in the state of California. Altogether, Schiavo was the first court case to pit a medical determination of brain death against parental desires to sustain their daughter’s life at any cost, so long as it appeared the young woman retained sentience, which could be typically demonstrated by movement of the extremities or other twitches. Up until McMath, end-of-life cases involving young women of color received little to no media attention. Even as McMath and other newer cases involving young women of color still receive lesser media attention than cases centering on White women and their families, the concerns at the heart of McMath and related cases reflect similar parental patterns in rejection of medical standards of brain death. Race matters in these cases, and parents’ strong desires to keep their daughters of color alive are coupled with justifiable mistrust of the medical establishment. As legal scholar Barbara A. Noah notes, “After a lifetime of limited access to health care compared with [W]hites and, in some cases limited treatment options (because of lack of insurance coverage or biased clinical judgment by physicians), African Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities utilize strikingly higher levels of aggressive, life-prolonging care at the end of life.”32 McMath has sparked what leading bioethicist Thaddeus Pope refers to as the “Jahi McMath Shadow Effect”—an increase in the number of families,

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many of them among communities of color, going to court to insist upon lifesustaining treatment and block hospitals from moves they view as detrimental to their loved ones.33 Recent cases involving patients of color have since concerned twenty-year-old Aden Hailu of Reno, Nevada, whose father had to seek an audience in the appeals court for life support, which was granted, though she thereafter ultimately succumbed to cardiac arrest; and twenty-seven-year-old Taquisha McKitty of Toronto, Canada, whose family has succeeded in keeping her on life support though a death certificate was issued for her in 2017. THE IMAGE OF THE BODY IN DEATH CASES In this chapter, we have seen that the public image of the patient’s body matters in health care settings, as well as in the funeral home. This public image matters to the family of these young women and to the courts forced to make hard decisions about life’s continuation or end. These sentiments also intersect with the media and its approach to coverage of the thorny legal and social issues of death and dying. Across these cases, the media’s involvement has complicated the portrayal of the bodies of these iconic young women, who were previously vibrant, able-bodied, and understood as able to speak for themselves.34 Using supercharged language, and purposeful visual and textual imagery, the media plays an important role in these cases, often adopting the passionate language of opponents to treatment cessation or ventilator withdrawal and stoking public concern over end-of-life decisions.35 This impacts public and judicial opinion in ways that reflect the power of the body to shape legal analysis. The trajectory of these court cases also demonstrates how the intricate medical distinctions between measureable indicators and states of irreversible brain damage, including persistent vegetative states, coma, and brain cell loss (as indicated in medical scans), can be polarized in the media, even as they remain cause for continued medical, bioethical, and legal discussion and research.36 So what does the image of the body achieve in these iconic death and dying cases? Why do so many young women of similar ages center in key court cases and landmark decisions on death and dying? In conclusion, I offer five key assessments at the intersection of the law and the power of the legal and media imagery of the disabled, debilitated, and/or unconscious body. Body as Ethical Pledge When a patient enters a hospital as an unconscious body, or becomes one thereafter, physicians and other providers are required to give care within the limits of the law, because their refusal to act may present them with criminal



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or civil liability. And providers with religious missions may resist terminating care for those reasons. Under medical care, the patient, who may be little more than a warm body without ability for thought or intentionality, represents the provider’s commitment to life, regardless of the patient’s particular circumstances. Providers must give care unless limits are explicitly set by the patient or the law, and may then only resist for religious or other reasons.37 Body as Billboard The state can take moral commitment a step further. The state can proclaim, as Missouri and Florida did in these cases, an interest in protecting life—as measured by little more than a beating heart—no matter what. In Cruzan and Schiavo the patients were kept alive beyond any chance of significant medical recovery, the effect of which created powerful visual imagery on the subject of the right to die. Under the extreme circumstances which required their hospitalization, Nancy Cruzan and Terri Schiavo could be interpreted as living billboards advertising the state’s total dedication to life at any cost. The widely circulated images of both Cruzan and Schiavo were appropriated by the state as a symbol of its dedication to life at any cost, regardless of family wishes and medical judgments. The very public battle over Nancy Cruzan’s death makes this quite clear, reflecting an ideological conflict between the state of Missouri and its self-imposed claim to assert the primacy of life, as opposed to Cruzan’s parents, who felt they had already lost their daughter and wanted to let her go. As Justice Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in Cruzan, “The Cruzan family’s continuing concern provides a concrete reminder that Nancy Cruzan’s interests did not disappear with her vitality or her consciousness. However commendable may be the State’s interest in human life, it cannot pursue that interest by appropriating Nancy Cruzan’s life as a symbol for its own purposes” [Italics mine].38 Body as Media Accelerant News reporting shapes public opinion and has the ability to influence voters and political outcomes. It informs the public of facts and figures, but can also serve to enlighten—to broaden perspectives and add depth to discussions of politics and policy. What the media reports, and how it reports, matters.39 As a society, we rely on the media as a cultural resource to help us make sense of the world, and coverage of these painful death and dying situations has the potential to construct patients as ideological symbols without regard to legal or scientifically measureable realities.40 In such controversial court cases, death is removed from the private sphere to that of the public, where it has the

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potential to become overladen with political and ideological angles, including racial and gendered ideologies. What is clear is that the media biases its coverage—the key death and dying cases reviewed in this chapter represent a societal preference for the bodies of young White women, through a proliferation of imagery circulated of their bodies, as subjects of extended coverage (and a preference for images of their bodies before the onset of extreme deterioration). The media presents dying by preferring particular images and characterizations over others, just as funerals clean up the deceased and stage the dead body in a socially acceptable manner. In this, we produce medical masks for the inequality and undesirability we refuse to see, or in sociologist Tina Weber’s words, “[t]he unwanted is hidden and replaced by something wanted.”41 Circulating the static photographic images of the young patients at the center of these important court cases is a means of disseminating highly charged sound bites. Body as Lightning Rod African Americans are twice as likely as Whites to ask that their lives be medically prolonged as much as possible, even in cases of irreversible coma—a preference that likely relays fears of medical neglect and stems from documented histories of extensive racialized medical abuse in the United States. This history includes the well-known Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (1932–1972), through which state-sponsored White doctors deliberately infected African American men in Alabama with syphilis, and for decades provided no medical treatment because they intended to observe and measure the disease’s unmitigated spread among the community. In addition, the critical reception of recent journalism on the life story of Henrietta Lacks (1920–1951),42 and a related, Oprah Winfrey–produced HBO film in 2017, has helped to bring further popular attention to the gross mistreatment historically exercised on African American women by White doctors in the United States, and the ongoing racial and gendered dimensions of inequality in access to adequate health care and treatment. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman of the Baltimore, Maryland, area whose cervical cancer cells were sampled without her consent in a racially segregated hospital and replicated in laboratories in the 1950s unbeknown to her or her family. Her cells, known as “HeLa cells” were used for further experimentation on other vulnerable populations including Jews and incarcerated prisoners; today, her uniquely “immortal” cells continue to be replicated and experimented upon, still resulting in million-dollar profit margins for the corporations that own them, though no remittances have been designated for her surviving family.



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Race often matters in end-of-life decisions, just as it does in other areas of medicine.43 A large body of research has shown that Black patients are less likely to receive appropriate medications and surgeries than are their White counterparts, regardless of their levels of education or health care insurance, and Blacks are more likely to receive undesirable medical interventions, like amputations.44 Unsurprisingly, these medical realities have bearing on the relationships contemporary parents of color have with the medical establishment, and stand to impact their social acceptance of recommended courses of treatment or medical assessments of brain death. Some of the increase in brain-death protests may result from families feeling that practitioners are too eager to check for and call brain death because of the need for viable and transplantable organs, the cost of maintaining the patient’s hospitalization, or a need for hospital beds (for the treatment of other patients).45 Communication studies and psychology-sociology scholar duo Celia Kitzinger and Jenny Kitzinger have noted in studies of end-of-life circumstances that “. . . ‘brain death’ is often not actually treated by relatives as ‘really dead.’”46 Considering this, the challenges presented by the looming death of a loved one construct the end of life as a highly contested space, leading some courts, as with McMath, to open the door to an evaluation of brain-death standards. As “Sleeping Beauties,” these young women patients and their circumstances can be interpreted alongside the Schiavo category of medical mistrust. Their parents appear to have limited trust in doctors, and are additionally wary of implicit racial bias.47 Body as Vessel of Memory Finally, and perhaps most important, the body is a way to hold on to the patient as still “alive,” as people may desire to remember the person—be her vital, funny, engaging, loving, and loved. In these crucial legal cases involving youthful women largely in their twenties, the body remains the family’s only solid link to the young daughter and her memory. Where photos of these women, as circulated in the media, reflect their once vivacious demeanors, such images intensify journalistic coverage.48 Patients who are young White women are presented as attractive “Snow Whites” symbolic of wasted life; a tragedy for society to lose, and a racialized talking point for pro-life political elements. Although the merits of “life-sustaining” treatments in these cases are unclear, Kitzinger and Kitzinger further observe that children in a persistent vegetative state are akin to “‘liminal beings’ who hover in an ambiguous zone,” with doctors, judges, and families struggling to make sense of their

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status as “neither fully alive nor unambiguously dead.”49 The youthfulness of these patients can create a considerable challenge for family members as to how to view their daughter’s living body when her mind appears silent, with all abilities for language removed or potentially dormant. Though key cases reviewed in this chapter show that families largely advocate for the right to terminate their daughters’ lives, this is not before some “Sleeping Beauties” become zombies in the public sphere, where their status as barely alive may be openly debated. However controversial, publicized findings of brain death serve to make families, the courts, and the wider public aware that a once vibrant body still exists and breathes. NOTES   1.  Keith F. Durkin, “Death, Dying, and Dead in Popular Culture,” in Handbook of Death and Dying (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2003).   2.  The President’s Council on Bioethics, Controversies in the Determination of Death: A White Paper by the President’s Council on Bioethics (Washington, DC, December 2008).   3.  With the exception of Elizabeth Bouvia, who had cerebral palsy and several other ailments.   4.  Alan Maisel, “Antecedent Law and Ethics of Aid in Dying,” 34 Quinnipiac L. Rev. 609 (2016). See also Kathy L. Cerminara, “Rip Currents: Rough Water for End of Life Decision Making,” SSRN, March 20, 2017.   5.  Lawrence R. Samuel, Death, American Style: A Cultural History of Dying in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2013), 60.   6.  Leen Van Brussel and Nico Carpenter, eds., The Social Construction of Death: Interdisciplinary Perspectives 13 (England: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014).  7. Ibid., 16 as quoted in Zygmunt Bauman, Mortality and Immortality (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992).   8.  Keith Schneider, “Dr. Jack Kevorkian Dies at 83: A Doctor Who Helped End Lives,” New York Times, June 3, 2011.  9. Andrew Solomon, “On My Mother, and Dr. Kevorkian,” The New Yorker, June 4, 2011. 10. Ibid. 11.  Brittany Maynard, “My Right to Death with Dignity at 29,” CNN (November 2, 2014). Accessed April 13, 2018, http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/opinion/ maynard-assisted-suicide-cancer-dignity/index.html. 12.  Oregon, the first U.S. state to pass an assisted-suicide bill, is a very White state, and the patients using the Death with Dignity Act (DWDA) are overwhelmingly upper-middle-class and upper-class White patients. The 2014 report from the Oregon Health Authority states that the median age of Death With Dignity Act patients is seventy-two years old, of whom 95 percent are White, and three-quarters have at least some college education.



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13.  The President’s Council on Bioethics, Controversies in the Determination of Death: A White Paper by the President’s Council on Bioethics (Washington, DC, December 2008). 14.  Joseph H. Howell and William Frederick Sale, eds., Life Choices: A Hastings Center Introduction to Bioethics, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000), 305. 15.  Bouvia v. Superior Court, 225 Cal. Rptr. 297 (1986). 16.  In re Quinlan, 70 N.J. 10, 355 A.2d 647, 664 (1976). 17.  A particularly good account of Quinlan’s treatment can be found in Haider Warraich, Modern Death: How Medicine Changed the End of Life (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 72–85. 18.  M. L. Tina Stevens, “The Quinlan Case Revisited: A History of the Cultural Politics of Medicine and the Law,” J. Health Politics, Policy and Law 21 (1996): 347, 352. (“The refusal to terminate treatment resulted in litigation less because of problematic technology than because of professional fears over criminal liability. Liability had been an issue from the beginning of the litigation.”) 19.  In re Quinlan, 355 A.2d 647 (Sup.Ct. NJ 1976). 20.  Matthew Colbeck, “‘Is She Alive? Is She Dead?’ Representations of Chronic Disorders of Consciousness in Douglas Coupland’s Girlfriend in a Coma.” Medical Humanities 42 (2016): 160–165. http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/107918/1/Matthew %20Colbeck%20-%20Representations%20of%20CDoCs%20in%20Douglas%20 Coupland’s%20Girlfriend%20in%20a%20Coma%20-%20Accepted%20Version %20(BMJ%20MedHum).pdf. 21.  See Wareraich Supra, n 15 at p. 79. 22.  See Jill Lepore, The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death (Alfred A. Knopf. 2012), 153. 23.  Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, 497 U.S. 261 (1990). 24.  Ibid., 279. 25.  Ibid., 301–330. 26.  Guardianship of Schiavo, 780 So. 2d 176 (Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District, 2001). 27. J. E. Perry, L. R. Churchill, and H. S. Kirshner, “The Terri Schiavo Case: Legal, Ethical, and Medical Perspectives,” Annals of Internal Medicine 143 (2005): 744–748. 28. “Terri Schiavo’s 2002 CT Scan, The Abrams Report on NBC News.” Accessed March 29, 2005, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7328639/ns/msnbc-the_abrams _report/t/terri-schiavos-ct-scan/#.WeOO21uCzX4. Accessed November 28, 2018. 29.  “Jahi McMath’s Family to Be Honored by Terri Schiavo Network.” NBC Universal Media. Accessed March 27, 2014, http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/ PHI-Jahi-McMaths-Family-to-Be-Honored-by-Terri-Schiavo-Network-252654401 .html. Accessed November 28, 2018. 30. “Tonsil Surgery Ends with Oakland Girl ‘Brain Dead’ and on Life Support,” Our Weekly Los Angeles. Accessed December 20, 2013, http://ourweekly .com/news/2013/dec/20/tonsil-surgery-ends-oakland-girl-brain-dead-and-li/. Accessed November 28, 2018.

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31.  Mike Moffit, “Judge: Jahi McMath May be Alive, Lawsuit Can Proceed,” SF GATE, September 7, 2017. 32.  Barbara A. Noah, “The Role of Race in End-of-Life Care,” 352. 33.  Another recent U.S. case contesting brain death is that of Aden Hailu. She was an Ethiopian-born college student at the University of Nevada who was declared brain-dead at a hospital in Nevada after exploratory surgery for stomach pain. A district court rejected her father’s request to keep her on a ventilator, but the Nevada Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s decision, ruling that expert testimony was needed to determine whether the standard brain-death tests “adequately measure all functions of the entire brain.” (The planned court hearing never occurred, because Hailu’s heart stopped beating while she was on the ventilator.) See, for example, Siobhan McAndrew, “The Contested Death of Aden Hailu: Father Fought Hospital to keep Daughter on Life Support in a Case that could have National Implications,” Reno Gazette Journal, March 25, 2016. Accessed April 13, 2018, https://www.rgj .com/story/news/2016/03/25/contested-death-aden-hailu/82269006/. 34. Bethy Squires, “What Our Obsession with Tragic, Beautiful, Mentally Ill Women Says About Us,” Broadly (October 20, 2017), https://broadly.vice.com/en _us/article/wjg8em/what-our-obsession-with-tragic-beautiful-mentally-ill-women-says -about-us. 35. Sherrie Dulworth, “From Schiavo to Death Panels: How Media Coverage of End-of-Life Issues Affects Public Opinion,” New York Law School Review 58 (2013–2014): 391, 394. 36.  Ibid., 391 (analyzing journalistic coverage of several death and dying situations); Eric Racine et al., “Media Coverage of the Persistent Vegetative State and End-of-Life Decision-making,” Neurology 71 (2008): 1027–1032. (Media coverage included refutations of the persistent vegetative state (PVS) diagnosis, attributed behaviors inconsistent with PVS, and used charged language to describe end-of-life decision-making). 37.  Joseph H. Howell and William Frederick Sale, eds., Life Choices: A Hastings Center Introduction to Bioethics, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000), 305. 38.  Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, 497 U.S. 261, 356 (1990). 39.  Sherrie Dulworth, supra n. 35 at 391. 40.  Tony Walter, Jane Littlewood, and Michael Pickering, “Death in the News: The Public Invigilation of Private Emotion,” Sociology 29 (1995): 579. 41.  Tina Weber, “Representations of Corpses in Contemporary Television,” 79. Fran McInerney, “Ladies’ Choice? Requested Death in Film,” 92. 42.  Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (New York: Broadway Books, 2010). 43.  Chanita Hughes Halbert et al., “Racial Differences in Trust in Health Care Providers,” Archives Internal Med. 166 (2006): 896, 898 (concluding that African Americans were significantly more likely to express distrust in their physicians compared to White patients). 44. Rachel Aviv, “What Does It Mean to Die? Annals of Medicine,” The New Yorker, https://www.cbsnews.com/video/judge-rules-jahi-mcmath-is-brain-dead/. Accessed February 5, 2018.



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45. Ibid. 46. Celia Kitzinger and Jenny Kitzinger, “‘This In-Between’: How Families Talk About Death in Relation to Severe Brain injury and Disorders of Consciousness,” in Leen Van Brussel and Nico Carpenter, ed., The Social Construction of Death: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (England: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014), 255. 47. Nan Tracy Zheng, Dana B. Mukamel, Thomas Caprio, Shubing Cai, and Helena Temkin-Greener, “Racial Disparities in In-Hospital Death and Hospice Use Among Nursing Home Residents at the End-of-Life,” Med Care 49 (2011): 992, 998. (“Our findings confirm that compared to Whites, Black residents experience more aggressive EOL [end-of-life] care with higher rates of in-hospital deaths and lower rates of hospice use. Having observed these overall large racial differences, we examined whether racial disparities in these outcomes are the result of differential within-facility treatments and/or of across-facility variations.”) 48.  Ibid. at pp. 239 et seq. 49. Ibid.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abrams, Dan. “Terri Schiavo’s 2002 CT Scan.” The Abrams Report on NBC News. Accessed March 29, 2005, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7328639/ns/msnbc-the _abrams_report/t/terri-schiavos-ct-scan/#.WeOO21uCzX4. Accessed November 28, 2018. Aviv, Rachel. “What Does It Mean to Die?” The New Yorker, February 5, 2018. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/what-does-it-mean-to-die. https://www.cbsnews.com/video/judge-rules-jahi-mcmath-is-brain-dead. Accessed November 28, 2018. Bouvia v. Superior Court, 225 Cal. Rptr. 297 (1986). California Superior Court. Cerminara, Kathy L. “Rip Currents: Rough Water for End of Life Decision Making” SSRN, March 20, 2017. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3118708. Accessed November 28, 2018. Colbeck, Matthew. “‘Is She Alive? Is She Dead?’ Representations of Chronic Disorders of Consciousness in Douglas Coupland’s Girlfriend in a Coma.” Medical Humanities 42 (2016): 160–165. http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/107918/1/Matthew%20 Colbeck%20-%20Representations%20of%20CDoCs%20in%20Douglas%20 Coupland’s%20Girlfriend%20in%20a%20Coma%20-%20Accepted%20Version %20(BMJ%20MedHum).pdf. Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, 497 U.S. 261, 279, 301–330 (1990). U.S. Supreme Court. Dulworth, Sherrie. “From Schiavo to Death Panels: How Media Coverage of Endof-Life Issues Affects Public Opinion.” New York Law School Law Review 58 (2013–2014): 391–400. Durkin, Keith F. “Death, Dying, and Dead in Popular Culture.” In Handbook of Death and Dying, edited by Clifton D. Bryant, 43–49. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2003.

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Fernandez, Lisa. “Jahi McMath’s Family to Be Honored by Terri Schiavo Network.” NBC Universal Media, March 27, 2014. http://www.nbcphiladelphia .com/news/local/PHI-Jahi-McMaths-Family-to-Be-Honored-by-Terri-Schiavo -Network-252654401.html. Accessed November 28, 2018. Guardianship of Schiavo, 780 So. 2d 176 (Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District, 2001). 2001. Court of Appeal of Florida. Halbert, Chanita Hughes, Katrina Armstrong, Oscar H. Gandy, Jr., and Lee Shaker. “Racial Differences in Trust in Health Care Providers.” Archives Internal Medicine 166 (2006): 896–901. Howell, Joseph H., and William Frederick Sale, eds. Life Choices: A Hastings Center Introduction to Bioethics, 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000. In re Quinlan, 70 N.J. 10, 355 A.2d 647, 664 (1976). 1976. New Jersey Supreme Court. Kitzinger, Celia, and Jenny Kitzinger. “‘This In-Between’: How Families Talk About Death in Relation to Severe Brain Injury and Disorders of Consciousness.” In The Social Construction of Death: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Leen Van Brussel and Nico Carpenter, 239–258. England: Palgrave MacMillan. 2014. Lawrence, Samuel R. Death, American Style: A Cultural History of Dying in America. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2013. Lepore, Jill. The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. Maynard, Brittany. “My Right to Death with Dignity at 29.” CNN, November 2, 2014. http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/opinion/maynard-assisted-suicide-cancer -dignity/index.html. Accessed April 13, 2018. McAndrew, Siobhan. “The Contested Death of Aden Hailu: Father Fought Hospital to Keep Daughter on Life Support in a Case that Could Have National Implications.” Reno Gazette Journal, March 25, 2016. https://www.rgj.com/story/ news/2016/03/25/contested-death-aden-hailu/82269006/. McInerney, Fran. “Ladies’ Choice? Requested Death in Film.” In Social Construction of Death: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Leen Van Brussel and Nico Carpenter, 92–113. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Moffit, Mike. “Judge: Jahi McMath May Be Alive, Lawsuit Can Proceed.” SF GATE, September 7, 2017. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Judge-Jahi-McMath -may-be-alive-lawsuit-can-12180179.php. Noah, Barbara A. “The Role of Race in End-of-Life Care.” Journal of Health Care Law and Policy 15, no. 2 (2012): 349–378. Perry, Joshua E., Larry R. Churchill, and Howard S. Kirshner. “The Terri Schiavo Case: Legal, Ethical, and Medical Perspectives.” Annals of Internal Medicine 143 (2005): 744–748. Racine, Eric, Rakesh Amaram, Matthew Seidler, Marta Karczewska, and Judy Illes. “Media Coverage of the Persistent Vegetative State and End-of-Life Decisionmaking.” Neurology 71 (2008): 1027–1032.



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Schneider, Keith. “Dr. Jack Kevorkian Dies at 83: A Doctor Who Helped End Lives.” New York Times, June 3, 2011. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/us/ 04kevorkian.html. Accessed November 28, 2018. Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Broadway Books, 2010. Solomon, Andrew. “On My Mother, and Dr. Kevorkian.” New Yorker, June 4, 2011. Squires, Bethy. “What Our Obsession with Tragic, Beautiful, Mentally Ill Women Says About Us.” Broadly, October 20, 2017. https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/ wjg8em/what-our-obsession-with-tragic-beautiful-mentally-ill-women-says -about-us. Accessed November 28, 2018. Stevens, M. L. Tina. “The Quinlan Case Revisited: A History of the Cultural Politics of Medicine and the Law.” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 21, no. 2 (1996): 347–366. The President’s Council on Bioethics, Controversies in the Determination of Death: A White Paper by the President’s Council on Bioethics. Washington, DC, December 2008. “Tonsil Surgery Ends with Oakland Girl ‘Brain Dead’ and on Life Support.” Our Weekly Los Angeles, December 20, 2013. http://ourweekly.com/news/2013/dec/20/ tonsil-surgery-ends-oakland-girl-brain-dead-and-li/. Accessed November 28, 2018. Van Brussel, Leen, and Nico Carpenter, eds. The Social Construction of Death: Interdisciplinary Perspectives 13. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014. Walter, Tony, Jane Littlewood, and Michael Pickering. “Death in the News: The Public Invigilation of Private Emotion.” Sociology 29 (1995): 579–596. Warraich, Haider. Modern Death: How Medicine Changed the End of Life. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017. Weber, Tina. “Representations of Corpses in Contemporary Television.” In Social Construction of Death: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Leen Van Brussel and Nico Carpenter, 75–91. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Zheng, Nan Tracy, Dana B. Mukamel, Thomas Caprio, Shubing Cai, and Helena Temkin-Greener. “Racial Disparities in In-Hospital Death and Hospice Use Among Nursing Home Residents at the End-of-Life.” Medical Care 49 (2011): 992–998.

Unit Three

THE BEAUTIFUL BODY AND ITS PARTS

Contributions to unit 3 call specific attention to Western standards of beauty and perfection as ways of further defining who is included in the category of human. This builds upon the insights of unit 2, which illuminated how bodies are distinguished by practitioners of (biomedical) science, literature, urban redevelopment, and the law. Here, in unit 3, the notion of beauty is variously taken up across three chapters concerning knowledge production, female bodily autonomy, and self-determination in contexts of dance, as well as biomedicine, and science fiction. These are arenas of social activity and imagining that also concern the regulation of heteronormativity, femininity, and racial hegemony. A key intervention of the chapters of this unit surfaces in their analyses of how social contexts presented as neutral settings or “fixes” for discrimination on the basis of race, sex, gender, and/or sexuality, like the racially inclusive performance stage, or even the imagined spaceship of the future, are precisely the places where we today observe the persistence of historical norms of exclusion and inequality. Such norms continue to govern how we read the bodies and behaviors of dancers, medical patients, surgeons, and scientists as beautiful, perfect, or expected. Chapters in this unit also demonstrate how our cultural expectations vary with focus on particular parts of the body, ranging from the internal—bones, musculature, and wombs, to the external—buttocks, feet, and skin. These are expectations that have amplified the success of dancers Michelle Dorrance and Misty Copeland, by differently celebrating their bodies (and racial and gender presentations) as unexpected triumphs for their dance genres. Along these lines, unit 3 of this book assembles descriptions, portrayals, and

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critiques of the female body through attention to the foundational medical textbook Gray’s Anatomy (1858) (which stays in print through its periodic re-issue); participatory observation of the formal teaching of ballet and tap to aspiring young dancers; and careful analysis of films such as The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962) and its portrayal of women forcibly subjugated to lifealtering medicalized experimentation.

Chapter Eight

Medicine’s Cultural Power The Textbook Case of Gray’s Anatomy Emily August

TAKING MODERN MEDICINE AT FACE VALUE As twenty-first-century subjects, many of us have inherited the idea that the Western biomedical sciences stand in a transparently factual relation to the human body. Today, it seems obvious that medicine articulates the body’s essential parameters and mechanisms. Many of us regularly give our bodies over to medicine’s ideologies because as a society, we embrace medicine as a science, and we embrace science as inarguably objective. After all, modern medicine’s beneficial effects are undeniable. Advances in various branches of Western biomedicine have resulted in its ability to rapidly heal life-threatening wounds, to exchange failing organs for functioning ones, to ameliorate once irreversible conditions, eradicate diseases, and defeat cancers. At times, following medicine’s directives can help significantly prolong one’s life. And though it has not always been the case, for some time now, our society has substantially rewarded some of medicine’s practitioners, including some physicians and surgeons, who may enjoy generous monetary compensation and elite—even heroic—cultural status. Simultaneously, the discipline of medicine itself deploys language and practices that create, legitimate, and perpetuate its cultural power. But the cultural power we assign to the sciences of the body can have dangerous material effects. For example, historical distance between our present day and past abuses can lead us to look past those social prejudices that were facilitated by medical science. We soothe ourselves with the palliative maxim that in cases where medical science has authorized social oppression, such abuse has been simply taken out of context, misinterpreted, or misapplied. This means we often neglect to realize that we are very steeped in medicine’s 167

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intoxicating validation. In truth, medical teachings and practices often encode social oppression. Discourses and ideologies of medicine shape our laws and social landscape, making many vulnerable to institutionally sanctioned bodily violence. We must therefore ready ourselves for the cultural work of dismantling the part of biomedicine’s power that facilitates oppression. One approach to this task is to evaluate the source, asking ourselves when, where, and how was objectivity in Western medicine first cultivated. This implicates medical textbooks in their instructive roles as texts that define a universal scientific standard of particular of bodies as “normal,” “healthy,” and compliant. This confers an incredible amount of social power to individuals who possess bodies approaching these idealized standards.1 However, these textbooks are not infallible: as published documents they harbor ideas about the body already in circulation, and also participate in further shaping knowledge and discourse about the human body. Thus, both modern and historic textbooks catalogue changing cultural ideas about the body, just as much as they register changing scientific approaches to it. Analyzing older texts gives us insight into nineteenth-century beliefs, some of which accrued enough cultural power to become entrenched within science. This chapter focuses on the iconic medical textbook, Henry Gray’s Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical, originally published in England in 1858, and now in its forty-first edition. Long referred to colloquially as Gray’s Anatomy, this textbook has been so influential that it has become part of our cultural vernacular; most recently, referenced through the popular television hospital drama Grey’s Anatomy. The surgical textbook by Henry Gray (1827–1861) was originally published during the era in which Western medicine transitioned from a professional discipline into a full-scale, male-dominated institution, and did so, in part, by cultivating a white-malecentered objectivity from discourses and practices that served to legitimize its cultural authority. Examining the content and imagery of Gray’s Anatomy transports us to the historical moment when medicine began its transformation into an institution—a science. Approaching this text using the skills of textual and literary analysis enables a rigorous and nuanced close reading of how language is used, what its usage infers, and what the material effects of its usage are in the world. In this chapter, I orient the textbook historically; I describe its representational strategies and how they gave rise to a standardized scientific discourse, then I apply that analysis to the textbook’s abstract “body” to demonstrate that literary analysis of medical writing can uncover the cultural biases that the sciences can implicitly instill. My examination of Henry Gray’s Anatomy will show how the deployment of the passive voice throughout the textbook



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impacts the reading of the lifeless, dismembered body parts it hosts within its pages. Invested with agency, these parts newly animated within the textbook allow those deriving their practice of medicine from it to feel disconnected from the surgical—and social—violence the textbook instructively inures. Through my literary interrogation of Gray’s Anatomy, I hope to provide an example of how we might equip ourselves in today’s society to analyze and decode the deep implications of the scientific language and practices that we have come to rely on, and which may, in fact, be facilitating our oppression. THE VICTORIAN SURGICAL TEXTBOOK2 Throughout the 1800s, physicians, anatomists, and surgeons generated copious amounts of text. Exam notes, patient histories and charts, postmortem reports and casebook ledgers, lecture notes, and even diaries, memoirs, and creative works3 contributed to the vast field of text that medical professionals produced, disseminated, studied, and archived. Even so, a new genre emerged during the Victorian era: the anatomical and surgical textbook. Derived from the anatomical reference books of previous eras, but significantly cheaper to produce and purchase, these new textbooks helped change the face of medical education and practice. Following students and practitioners into a variety of clinical settings and beyond, they became the medical conduits through which notions of the human body were codified. Prior to the 1840s, only a handful of standard anatomical reference books were available to students and practitioners. With their often beautifully detailed plates and unwieldy dimensions, most medical reference books were laborious to produce, expensive to publish and purchase, and impractical to carry around.4 This meant that much of the knowledge that medical students learned about anatomical structures was gleaned through lectures and demonstrations delivered by professors of anatomy, or through hands-on experience after they established their own practices. By the 1850s, as medical schools in Britain expanded their curricula and medical education became more regulated, anatomical and surgical textbooks became a recognizable genre. As a result, the techniques of medicine and their formal implementation became more specified and refined, to a degree that required a subset of specialized instructional texts.5 In addition, print technologies, together with increasing readerships, helped to generate an unprecedented amount of affordable books, pamphlets, and newsletters. These trends encouraged prominent anatomists and surgeons to compete in authoring textbooks that would garner critical acclaim as well as profits. Texts like Robert Todd and William Bowman’s The Physiological Anatomy

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and Physiology of Man (1843), Thomas Watson’s lectures on The Principles and Practice of Physic (1843), Robert Knox’s Manual of Human Anatomy, Descriptive, Practical and General (1853), and Luther Holden’s Human Osteology (1855) became physically portable and more affordable, and thus ubiquitous in student settings. This publication trend both reflected and fueled medicine’s growing institutional power. First published in London in 1858, and then in Philadelphia in 1859, Henry Gray’s Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical was the most comprehensive of the mid-century reference books. At the time, most of Gray’s contemporaries published reference books that focused on a single body system, or contained precious few illustrations appended by confusing and inconvenient labeling apparatuses.6 Uniquely, the Anatomy exhaustively compiled descriptions, surgical and dissection instructions, and detailed illustrations for all of the bones, joints, muscles, nerves, vessels, and organs of the human body. Moreover, its first edition contained over seven hundred pages of text and over three hundred illustrations, but it was still small and relatively lightweight, easy for students to transport to lectures and dissections. The book was further distinguished by its specific status as a surgical textbook. Through its use, practitioners were not limited to the mere acquisition of anatomical knowledge, but could also ostensibly apply that knowledge to surgical settings. By 1862, both students and teachers of anatomy across the West considered it the standard reference work (Richardson 2008), and they forwent motley collections of textbooks from various authors in favor of Gray’s singular effort. It quickly became the principal scientific descriptive standard for the human body. And by the time the iconic 1901 edition hit shelves, it had managed to not only encapsulate the developments of Victorian medicine, but to also establish its nineteenth-century body exemplar as objectively and irrefutably correct.7 Further, as a purportedly all-encompassing scientific articulation of the human body, the text signaled an ideology unique to the era: that medicine could sufficiently represent the universal body through its standardized ideal. Medical humanities scholar James Allard asserts that, on a rhetorical level, Gray’s Anatomy worked to bestow the impression that one’s own body was the very body described in the text. As devised by Gray, the textbook participated in a confluence of rhetorical practices through which the body was “redefined in the vocabulary of scientific medicine to produce a ‘medicalized’ body that seemed to erase the process of its production [and] stand as the body” (105). The Anatomy, then, provides insight into the imaginative limits of what constituted the “fact” of the nineteenth-century body, and revisiting the text alerts us to the very powerful ways that such universalizing could be used to articulate ideologies about the body.



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But what exactly is this universal body, and what does it look like? Henry Vandyke Carter’s original illustrations for the Anatomy were, and still remain, some of the most celebrated anatomical drawings. The textbook portrays a sexless, raceless, and ageless body; it is dismembered, broken down into its smallest units, and shorn of context. Individual body parts are illustrated without relation to their full body of origin, making for a radical absence of context. Each separate bone, vessel, and organ hovers in isolation above the sterile whiteness of the textbook page. This body is unrecognizable to the average, untrained reader. The fragmented parts among the Anatomy’s pages reveal the textbook itself to be a highly specialized “body” of knowledge that only a medical professional could comprehend. And indeed, this body must be imaginatively sutured back together and reanimated in order for its knowledge to be applied toward living surgical patients. Gray’s body presents as a series of flayed, amputated, and dissected cadavers constructed through the obscured, unwritten processes of violence that enabled the reveal of their inner vessels, organs, and other architectures. But Gray presents his body of knowledge without acknowledging the deaths and dissections that necessarily produced it (see chapter 10 by Thomas in this volume for more discussion of the concepts of “disembodiment” and “body of knowledge”). And his text aggressively suggests that the static cadaver it harbors is comparable to the living surgical patient. All in all, Gray’s Anatomy demonstrates how, by the 1850s, the body’s epistemology had become rooted in the visual iconography of pure surgical dismemberment, through which the events of death and dissection were treated as secondary to the biomedical endeavor. In fact, the state of Gray’s body suggests death and dissection to have never occurred at all: the body already exists in pieces. THE SURGEON AS SPECTRE: ERASURE AND THE PASSIVE VOICE Like most medical writing of the period, the Anatomy unfolds in the passive voice. “The human subject is provided with two sets of teeth” (871, emphasis mine), the text asserts. “The bones of the Carpus [. . .] are arranged in two rows” (158, emphasis mine); “the foot is constructed on the same principles as the hand” (211, emphasis mine); and, of the eyeball, “when the fragments are cleared away, the periosteum of the orbit will be exposed” (303, emphasis mine). Historian Ruth Richardson suspects that systematically cataloguing the text’s language would reveal a vocabulary of almost exclusively passive verbs, which is part of what constitutes, in her words, the “voice of the professional scientist” (2008, 213).

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Concering cases in which a patient’s diseased tongue must be removed, Gray writes: [M]any different methods have been adopted for its excision. [. . .] The mouth is widely opened with a gag, the tongue transfixed with a stout silk ligature. [. . .] The base of the tongue is cut through by a series of short snips, each bleeding vessel being dealt with as soon as divided. [. . .] In the event of the ranine artery being accidentally injured haemorrhage can be at once controlled by [. . .] dragging the root of the tongue forcibly forward (817, emphases mine).

In the above passages from Gray’s text, neither surgeon nor patient is ever quite there: the body is reduced to individual organs that undergo procedures at once clinical and intimately violent. It is never clear who acts or who is acted upon. The absence of personal pronouns and active verbs scientifically encodes passivity into the body, at the level of grammar. In this way, the human body is itself constructed as passive within the Anatomy. This passivity imbues the implied living patient with the stillness of the described corpse, ensuring that the body remains inactively fixed under the surgeon’s textual control.8 A convention of nineteenth-century medical discourse, the passive voice produces what literary scholar George Levine terms “self-annihilation,” paralleling what historians of science Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison refer to as scientific “objectivity,” and what historian Ruth Richardson calls “studied neutrality.” This studied neutrality, Richardson writes, . . . seems to be an acquisition of the professional scientist of [Gray’s] day, and has parallels with what the literary scholar Audrey Jaffe has analyzed concerning the “Omniscient Narrator” in the Victorian novel. She characterizes this non-being as belonging to “a series of cultural phenomena through which [. . .] knowledge itself—is coded as [W]hite, male, and middle class” (217).

What Audrey Jaffe refers to as the “non-being” of the surgeon-narrator, I identify as an erasure: the passive voice renders the surgeon invisible, replacing him with the disembodied voice of scientific objectivity. Grammatical passivity also erases the implied patient, whose body parts, evacuated of agency, seem to exist separately and independent of each other. This permits the surgeon to reemerge as an invisible authority over the (patient’s) body and its parts, and speak them into self-evident being through the text. Acting through the text, the student surgeon approaches the individual bones and organs he has dismembered with an independent animation that, as the text transpires, comes to look like agency. For, as we will see, these independently animated parts appear to act, or be acted upon, of their own accord.



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Such agentive mechanisms are most visible in the places where, despite his attempts at concealment, Gray’s surgeon almost emerges as the author of the body—as a ghostly whisper that blurs passivity and activity, living body and cadaver. When, in Gray’s formulation, the sphenoid bone of the cranium “presents for examination four surfaces” (72), it exists by virtue of simply presenting itself: the surgeon is invisible, and only the effects of his presence—his gaze—survive for inscription. But someone is on the other end of that “examination”: the possessor of the gaze to whom the bone “presents.” As Gray’s narration advances, readers can feel the (invisible) surgeon’s presence speaking through his conspicuous absence. In a sense, the surgeon’s unreturned gaze upon the sphenoid bone makes him a kind of spectre: “. . . that which sees without being seen, [and] produces the sense of being seen, observed, surveilled” (Freccero 78). Gray’s surgeon “haunts” the very text that disappears him. The unspoken surgeon whose handiwork underlies the illustrated dissections the textbook presents thus acquires multiple gazes within the Anatomy: he gazes invisibly at the anatomized body, at the patient who is constructed to exist independently of that body, and perhaps, gazes at the surgical student who attempts to mimic his directions in the operating theater. To this point, what psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud writes of the ego could easily be said of Gray’s surgeon: [T]he ego [. . .] has the function of observing and criticizing the self [. . .]. [T]his mental agency becomes isolated, dissociated from the ego, and discernible to the physician’s eye. The fact that an agency of this kind exists, which is able to treat the rest of the ego like an object [. . .] [demonstrates] that man is capable of selfobservation (136).

Because everything at which the surgeon gazes is his own creation, and because his creations cannot return his gaze, these multiple optics haunt the text, and gather in their return to the surgeon as a self-gaze, all without ever requiring the presence of a unified body in possession of agency. Through this rhetorical mechanism, Gray’s version of the body (and that of the coveted Victorian White male surgeon) ends up being the only one presented in the text, and with its absented surgeon, the text appears even more scientifically objective. Free to detach and float like a spectre above the terms and practices to which he subjects the body, the surgeon obscures his own role in flaying the body in service of science, and shaping a cultural ideology of the body. In assisting in the erasure of the patient’s body, as well as the surgeon’s violent trespass upon said body, Gray’s passive voice aids in facilitating the surgeon’s pure self-reflection—because the surgeon is the only living entity with an active role in the text (and at the same time not present), he observes

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only himself. This frees the surgeon to exercise his total self-absenting: he can, or can seem to, excise himself from the knowledge production represented within the text. Using these rhetorical technologies, the spectral surgeon is employed by Gray’s text to assist in making it appear as though the dead body exists and is violated independently of him. This is also how the Victorian surgical textbook becomes endowed with properties of animation beyond the grave. It must persuade readers to conjure the living body from the cadaver. In this way, the textbook participates at the intersection of medicine and society, as an important part of emerging medical epistemology. The Anatomy affords the White male surgeon incredible discursive and material power, while exonerating him from the sphere of medical activity that enacts multiple violences—ideological, literal, and social—upon the scientific body. ANONYMOUS ACTS OF VIOLENCE The invisibility of the surgeon and his animation of the body is a crucial component of the Anatomy’s transition into violence in the name of science—a violence for which no one is responsible. Gray’s Anatomy follows a predictable pattern of organization in his description of each known organ, bone, and vessel with respect to its features, construction, and function. This is followed by a section that imparts instructions for surgical intervention. Appended to these descriptions and instructions are anatomical illustrations of each part under study. These instructions and illustrations articulate the ideological violence I identify within Gray’s text, and lay the groundwork for physical violence. Following the text’s established formula, an illustration, “Plan of the Development of the Foot,” accompanies description of the foot’s osteology, or skeletal anatomy. As with all of the text’s illustrations, this foot is designed to represent the universal instance of its type, as the standard foot against which students should compare all other feet. But this foot is “broken”; its phalanges are lengthened and then separated at each joint, and three of the five phalanges are entirely absent. The appendage thereby comes to be scientifically standardized as always already damaged and dismembered. The text surrounding the foot indicates that its various bones “appear” and “unite” at different stages of human growth. These textual labels inscribe the effect of a narrative, but not a dramatization of surgical dissection as a process: paradoxically, the skinned and separated foot is represented in the drawing as healthy and normative of human growth. But at no time could a single, healthy human foot contain all of the same bones in the state



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in which the drawing represents them. In its illustrated condition, then, this cadaver foot is evidence of two masked processes having already occurred, including the gradual maturation of a living body, and the multiple acts of dissection carried out on several bodies, that made possible the temporal collapse of (and amalgamation of the knowledge condensed within) this standardized foot. Perhaps this would carry less interpretive meaning if the Anatomy were intended as a strictly anatomical manual, but Gray’s is designed to guide students in live surgical intervention. In the text’s formulation, then, the universal body of the live patient is already dead. By obscuring the relationship between surgery and dissection—indeed, by making them equivalent—the text elides the similarities between a living patient and a cadaver. Thus we can see two significant representational strategies at work in the text: the portrayal of “standard” appendages as dismembered and broken, and the production of an equivalence between surgery and dissection that masks the discipline’s epistemological dependence on death. The text’s rhetoric points to an ideological violence at its core; a violence upon which nineteenth-century medicine was structured. Moreover, an additional consequence of this representational violence may be enfolded into the real-time practice of the surgeon, who must either translate the ideal foot of the text into the real foot in front of him, or force the real foot to comply with the idealized standard. This subconscious and/ or unspoken violence upon which the Anatomy relies provides the foundation for scenes of physical violence that erupt within the text. Each of the text’s chapters includes a section on “Surgical Anatomy” in which Gray lays out instructions for surgical repair of a particular body part. This instructive text is routinely prefaced with decontextualized descriptions of acts of strange and unexpected violence, ostensibly to explain why the featured body part might require surgical intervention. Writes Gray, “The metacarpal bone and the phalanges are not unfrequently broken from direct violence” and “The carpal bones are [. . .] liable to fracture [. . .] from extreme violence” (170). And further, “The sacrum is occasionally [. . .] broken by direct violence—i.e., blows, kicks, or falls on the part” (45). A similar chorus of violence is established separately through each part of the body. Of the eye, the text informs readers that “in cases of uncomplicated rupture the injury is usually [. . .] the result of a blow on the front of the eye,” and that, “in some forms of injury of the eyeball, as the impact of a spent shot, the rebound of a twig, or a blow with a whip, the iris may be detached from the Ciliary muscle” (842). The section on the foot opens by assuring readers that, “[c]onsidering the injuries to which the foot is subjected, it is surprising how seldom the tarsal

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bones are fractured” (213). But this assurance does not quite soothe anxiety, since the text returns to its familiar refrain: “most of the fractures are produced by direct violence” (213). The text continues its repetitive rehearsal: When fracture occurs [. . .] it is almost invariably the result of direct violence; but fractures of the posterior group [. . .] are most frequently produced by falls from a height onto the feet. [. . .] The metatarsal bones and phalanges are nearly always broken by direct violence, and in the majority of cases the injury is the result of severe crushing accidents (213–214, emphasis mine).

Again, the text gestures toward inexplicable, decontextualized instances of violence: was the subject pushed from a building in order to “fall from a great height,” or mangled underneath the wheels of a carriage in a “severe crushing accident”? Who or what threatens the body? What produces surgical necessity? Readers have only the vulnerable foot, of which “fractures may occur in any part and almost in any direction, either associated or not with fracture of other bones” (214; emphasis mine). As with the text’s other disembodied organs, the foot’s terrifying ability to be injured anywhere, at any time, and in relation to anything around it extends outward, creating a threat that is absolutely pervasive, but invisible, perpetrated by and upon bodiless objects of scientific scrutiny. Presented with these instances of decontextualized violence by an unmentioned aggressor, the reader is left to imagine someone having been facewhipped, battered by a shotgun, or stabbed in the eye with a twig, whether intentional or not. The effect of “direct” or “extreme” violence is narrated in the same terms as the suggested surgery for repair; the injured organ is “ruptured” or “detached” in the Latinate vocabulary of clinical practice. In its intimate relation to surgical practice, bodily violence thus becomes medicalized, with the commission of violence as a bedrock upon which medicine’s very epistemology depends. The persistent repetition of the term “direct violence,” and the endlessly strange and particular scenarios of violence that constitute their own repetitive echo, serve a significant function. These repetitions naturalize the relationship between violence and surgical intervention. By using repetition to naturalize the relationship between violence and surgery, the text exonerates aggressors from responsibility for the haunting injuries they have caused. In its mutual construction of surgical intervention and violence against the body, Gray’s text effectively collapses the distinction between the two, establishing a relation between surgery and violence that, perhaps unintentionally, describes surgery as the direct effect of violence—a bodily violence that is everywhere pervasive but performed by no one. Gray’s text proffers a



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concept of embodiment using an abstract body whose ontological contours are described as the effect of bodily violence. The linguistic construction of Gray’s text—and of its contemporaries, more generally—creates a social universe that scientifically authorizes brutality. THE PELVIS SPEAKS As we have seen, the Victorian surgeon, within Gray’s text, invisibly occupies the passive body, then commits acts of physical violence that appear as if from nowhere. This universe that the surgical textbook makes possible—one that, in some sense, reflects the material world already in place—is haunting enough. But Gray’s text also reflects and creates conditions of social violence. In the Anatomy’s section on the pelvis, real-world bodies suddenly threaten to materialize. Characters who feel almost like persons populate the section, infiltrating the text with a sense of the living, breathing agents it has worked so hard to smother. The text effectively manages that threat, however, by vocalizing the bones’ seemingly self-evident narrative, a narrative that Gray’s silent surgeon actually composes through them. Gray’s description of the pelvis reveals the surgeon’s textual invisibility as a tool in an oppressive coopting of the body. Opening with boldface type, the section textually emphasizes the inherent “difference” of its subject: Differences between the Male and Female Pelvis.—The female pelvis [. . .] is distinguished from the male by the bones being more delicate [. . .]. The whole pelvis is less massive, and its bones are lighter and more slender, and its muscular impressions are slightly marked. The iliac fossæ are shallow [. . .]. The inlet in the female is larger than in the male [. . .]. The cavity is shallower and wider. [. . .] The same differences are found in various races. European women are said to have the most roomy pelves (sic). That of the negress is smaller [. . .] and with a narrow pubic arch. The Hottentots and Bushwomen possess the smallest pelves (sic). In the fœtus and for several years after birth the pelvis is small in proportion to that of the adult. [. . .] The generally accepted opinion that the female pelvis does not acquire its sexual characteristics until after puberty has been shown by recent observations to be erroneous (182, emphases in original).

Here, Gray’s pelvis explicitly differentiates classes of persons, even as he has taken great pains throughout the rest of his manuscript to scrub away the individualizing characteristics (e.g., sex, race) from all other body parts he discusses. The pelvis, however, is different for Gray, and this reveals how his text has all along been exclusively constructed in reference to the White male

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body. From the mute pelvic bone of a cadaver, the text conjures an idealized, Victorian femininity, which is “delicate,” “less massive,” “lighter,” “more slender,” and “shallow.” Gray’s Anatomy employs italics to single out the “inlet” and “cavity” portions of the female pelvis as sites of scrutiny, where so-called “differences” are most clearly observable. Attention to the pelvic “inlet” and “cavity” rhetorically prepares readers for the text’s discussion of reproduction and childbearing, which includes a meditation on the fetal pelvis and its path toward reproductive capability. The relationship between the pelvis, the female, and the fetus is thus naturalized here, structuring the act of childbearing as the medically proper function of the female body; indeed, the only function that necessitates an acknowledgment of sexual difference. Expectedly, with their “most roomy” pelvises, European females are heroically best outfitted for the task of bearing children and thus propagating their race, while African Americans and Africans, respectively, are characterized as possessing deficient childbearing anatomies. Like the “standard” (White female) pelvis, those of the “Hottentots,” “Bushwomen,” and “negress” also conform to accepted Western ideas about racial and sexual inferiority.9 In mentioning the prepubescent female pelvis, the text briefly registers alarm about whether a woman is safely “female” before she sexually matures, but this alarm is quickly stifled by recourse to “recent observations,” alongside which “generally accepted opinion” encodes the surgeon’s participation—and, in fact, his preeminent standing—as part of the wider Western scientific community. After all, the surgeon (Gray) situates himself as part of the “recent observations” that have proven accepted opinion to be “erroneous.” In this sense, Gray advertises and validates his own professional expertise, with the female pelvis as his mouthpiece. Effectively, the scientific superiority of the White European body dominates the narrative that is asserted. From this springboard, the Victorian surgeon’s removal of his own and others’ embodied materiality allows him to speak European cultural dominance into being through anatomy. This is the social violence the text perpetrates. CONCLUSION: A DISEMBODYING ANATOMY A sustained interpretation of the Anatomy suggests that, by the time of its publication, the body was itself widely understood to be conceptually capable of disembodied agency. Consider, for example, that Mary Shelley’s notorious Frankenstein had already been published in 1818, exactly forty years before



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Gray’s surgical textbook. It is therefore no surprise that over the course of his text, Gray manages to slowly construct a scientific universe in which the body’s contours come to be defined as a series of animated organs, vulnerable to spontaneous and unforeseen acts of violence. The shape this universe takes is in some sense obvious and inevitable—after all, surgical intervention is typically sought by individuals after injury. But in the Anatomy these injuries take on the spectral and threatening form of gothic terror, with no one responsible for their commission. Upon the bedrock of this ideological violence, Gray commits social violence by asserting European cultural superiority through the body’s skeletal structure, encoding social oppression at the level of human anatomy. This generates tacit cultural ethics that tether biomedical science in service to ideology; a legacy that has paved the way for varied and continued abuses of patients. This has also imperiled patients’ implicit trust in their relationships with physicians and surgeons, as well as the treatments and medications they are prescribed. Some of these abuses gain journalistic attention, as with the case of Ethel Easter, an African American woman in Houston, Texas, who secretly audio-recorded her surgery in 2016, revealing surgeons, an anesthesiologist, and other support staff disparaging her body in racialized terms while she lay sedated on the operating table; they also endangered her life by using an antibiotic she was known to be allergic to.10 Even more recent, the 2018 Netflix documentary The Bleeding Edge features the heart-wrenching stories of women and men across racial and ethnic backgrounds, including doctors, who have greatly suffered as a result of the underresearched medical devices (e.g., birth control implants, hip implants, robotic surgical instruments) used on them by other doctors, surgeons, and a $400 billion industry focused on profit. Viewing these and other present-day forms of violence enacted upon vulnerable bodies within the context of Gray’s Anatomy helps us to see that successfully countering the ways of thinking that disregard patient sovereignty necessitates careful attention to the training of medical professionals and industry leaders. It is imperative that authors of future instructional texts be critical examiners of their own use of images, language, and violence to describe bodies and patients. As Ayanna Presley has publicly affirmed in her role as the first African American congresswoman to represent the U.S. state of Massachusetts, “. . . I’m not going to pretend that representation doesn’t matter. But it doesn’t matter so that we have progressive cred about how inclusive and representative we are (sic). It matters because it informs the issues that are spotlighted and emphasized, and it leads to more innovative and enduring solutions. That’s why it matters.”11

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NOTES 1. Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison note that scientific atlases—which medical textbooks would be considered—“have been central to scientific practice across disciplines and periods; and [. . .] [they] set standards for how phenomena are to be seen and depicted” (19). This is one of the primary qualities that makes the medical textbook such a fruitful site of analysis when investigating a culture’s ideas about the body and how those ideas get constructed, disseminated, and validated. 2.  Hereafter, I use the term medical textbook to refer to anatomical reference books that detailed the body’s anatomical structures. I use the term surgical textbook to refer to medical reference books that explicitly focused on applying knowledge of the body’s anatomical structures to the practice of surgery. Beyond the simple labeling of anatomical drawings, the surgical textbook contained copious surgical instructions, which is part of the genre’s novelty and its difference from previous iterations. Moreover, in their orientation toward instruction rather than simply description, surgical textbooks differ from anatomical reference books in their implicit directive to act; the textbook is the medium through which practitioners interact with the world, and—as I argue—these kinds of textbooks implicitly encourage practitioners to shape the bodies of their patients according to the textbook’s ideal image. 3.  The most well-known physician author of the period is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose famous detective Sherlock Holmes remains one of the most iconic characters in literary history; less well-known but equally fascinating are his medically themed short stories, collected together in 1894 in the volume ’Round the Red Lamp. 4.  The anatomical reference books to which I refer are what Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison call “scientific atlases,” an umbrella term that encompasses compendiums of knowledge in various scientific disciplines. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, these atlases “tend[ed] toward the large, even the gigantic. Many [were] oversized volumes [. . .] and some [were] too large and heavy to be comfortably handled by a single person” (23). 5.  With most of medicine’s institutional resources directed toward the development of surgery, combined with the growing refinement and pervasiveness of anesthetic technologies, “doctors had access to deeper, heretofore unreachable areas of the body. Consequently, the scope of what a medical student had to learn grew exponentially; hence, the need for an exhaustive encyclopedia such as Gray’s” (Hayes 12). 6.  See Ruth Richardson’s The Making of Mr. Gray’s Anatomy for a thorough discussion of labeling conventions in nineteenth-century anatomical texts. 7.  The 1901 American edition of the Anatomy is currently the historic edition that is most often reprinted, and is thus the historic edition that is most accessible; it is also the final edition to most closely mirror the 1858 original before developments in both concrete science and abstract rhetoric began to make successive editions of the text unrecognizable in comparison to early ones. 8. I do not mean to suggest here that passivity is an inherently inactive state without the possibility for individual agency, and much scholarship productively challenges the supposedly transparent cultural relationship between passivity and



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inaction, immobility, silence, erasure, or non-agency. Rather, I point out that Gray’s text believes in passivity’s non-agency, and uses textual techniques of passivity to facilitate control of the body’s actions and meanings.  9. While not formally considered a scientist of race, or race scientist, Henry Gray is not alone among nineteenth-century medical practitioners in identifying what he believes to be “anatomical and physiological differences between the negro and the white man,” and purporting to evidence those embodied differences through the process of dissection, in order to locate them “in the membranes, the muscles, the tendons, and all the fluids and secretions” (Cartwright 65). American physician Samuel A. Cartwright, for example, wrote his 1851 medical treatise “Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race” as a biological justification for the enslavement of African-descended peoples. His efforts followed earlier work by Philadelphia-based physician Samuel George Morton, who published his Crania Americana in 1839 (see chapter 4 by Mitchell and Michael in this volume for detailed review of Morton’s racial motivations). 10.  See, for example, Yanan Wang, “Patient Secretly Recorded Doctors as They Operated on Her. Should She Be So Distressed By What She Heard?” Washington Post, April 7, 2016. 11.  Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayanna Presley speaking at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, during her congressional run in 2018.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Allard, James Robert. “The Eyes Have It: Seeing the Beautiful in Gray’s Anatomy.” Beauty and the Abject: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Eds. Leslie Boldt-Irons, Corrado Federici, and Ernesto Virgulti. New York: Peter Lang, 2007. Cartwright, Samuel A. “Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race.” De Bow’s Review July 1851: 64–74. Daston, Lorraine J., and Peter Galison. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books, 2007. Freccero, Carla. Queer/Early/Modern. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” Psychological Writings and Letters. Ed. Sander Gilman. New York: Continuum, 1995. Gray, Henry. Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical. Philadelphia: Courage Books, 1974. Reprint. Hayes, Bill. The True Story of Gray’s Anatomy. New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2009. Levine, George. Dying to Know: Scientific Epistemology and Narrative in Victorian England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Richardson, Ruth. The Making of Mr. Gray’s Anatomy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Chapter Nine

“Tuck in Your Derrière” Butts and Bodies in Ballet and Tap Kat Richter

In 2015, ballet dancer Misty Copeland made history as the first African American woman to be promoted to the rank of principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre. Copeland’s promotion should not have been news in a country that prides itself on being “post-racial” by virtue of the election of its forty-fourth president, Barack Obama. But it was, because in American Ballet Theatre’s seventy-five-year history, it had never happened before. Principal dancers of color remain a rarity in the world of classical ballet (McCarthy-Brown, 2011; Patton, 2011) and the few who have earned this distinction have usually been men.1 Lauren Anderson became the first African American principal at Houston Ballet in 1990 but Copeland’s promotion nearly three decades later remains significantly emblematic of the systemic racism that still pervades classical ballet some five centuries after its origins in the royal courts of Europe. Also in 2015, tap dancer Michelle Dorrance made headlines as a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. Two years later, in 2017, Dance Magazine included Dorrance in its list of “The Most Influential People in Dance Today,” an honor she shared with Copeland. What is remarkable in her case (and has not gone unremarked upon in dance circles) is that like Copeland, Dorrance does not “look” like the type of person one would expect to find experiencing such success in her preferred genre of dance. Unlike the well-known African American male hoofers who gave birth to and nurtured rhythm tap through its early years, Dorrance is White. And she is a woman. That race (and to a lesser extent, gender) remains “noteworthy” in the careers of these two women is both problematic and indicative of broader issues in American society. Dance has been slow to garner the same academic attention as music or theater (Carter, 1998, 1; Copeland and Cohen, 1983, viii) 183

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but a closer investigation of both ballet and tap can help us to understand how connections between race, morality, and the body surface in dance, and how they play out in the performing arts and across society at large. Bodies and the discourse surrounding them are culturally constructed. It is to be expected, therefore, that the ideal “look” or the ideal “body” will vary from one dance genre to another, just as aesthetics differ among sociocultural groups. Due to the predominance of Western concert dance, however, which can be defined as including primarily classical ballet and modern dance, any deviation from a homogenized and narrowly defined “dancer’s body” and the “proper” carriage of said body is generally seen as “wrong” or “incorrect.” Definitions of this idealized body are determined by a number of factors, including gender and race. As will be discussed in greater detail later in this chapter, this body ideal has resulted in a form of cultural hegemony that has historically disadvantaged women of color like Misty Copeland in their pursuit of professional ballet careers. The predominance of classical ballet and Western concert dance in the wider dance world, itself another form of cultural hegemony resulting from ethnocentrism and antiquated ideas of cultural evolution, also functions to disadvantage non-ballet dancers such as Michelle Dorrance. Furthermore, insofar as gravity and the notion of verticality are concerned, “proper” carriage of the body can be seen to have moral implications, and these implications are usually drawn along racial lines. In this chapter, I examine ballet and tap, two dance forms popular in the United States, from an anthropological perspective, investigating the connection between discursive practices, transmission, and pedagogy to better understand the persistence of systemic racism in the dance world as it relates specifically to the construction of the body. I begin by defining key terms helpful to readers who may be less familiar with dance, or who are familiar with dance but less acquainted with anthropological analyses of the art form, in which dance is generally conceived of as a human movement system. I then offer a historical overview of the dancer’s body in relation to gravity, followed by a description of a typical dance class in each respective genre to illustrate how desirable qualities are communicated to and cultivated in students. METHODOLOGY As a professional tap dancer and professor of dance with degrees in both anthropology and history, I draw upon archival, ethnographic, and autoethnographic research methods in this chapter, including fieldwork conducted from 2009–



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2010 in the United Kingdom, and 2011–2017 in the United States. This fieldwork included structured and unstructured interviews, the recording and analysis of field notes, and extensive participant observation (a fieldwork technique that calls for direct participation from the ethnographer, as opposed to mere observation) comprised of taking classes in an array of genres including tap, ballet, modern, jazz, flamenco, and hip-hop. The classes I participated in were offered at a variety of schools and rehearsal studios throughout Philadelphia, with the occasional class also taken at Steps, a professional studio in New York City, and Pineapple, a professional studio known for commercial dance in London.2 In addition, I also observed rehearsals and performances of local companies Pennsylvania Ballet, Koresh Dance Company (modern jazz), Raphael Xavier (hip-hop), Kulu Mele African Dance and Drum Ensemble, and Tap Team Two.3 These deep experiences, coupled with research conducted in the archives of the Ann Hutchinson Guest Collection at Roehampton University, and over fifteen years in dance education, have afforded me a wide range of firsthand experiences from which to draw my conclusions. DEFINING DANCE: KEY TERMS AND CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS Anthropologist Joann Keali’inohomoku defines dance as “purposefully selected and controlled rhythmic movements; the resulting phenomenon is recognized as dance by both performing and observing members of a given group” (1970, 20).4 On a functional level, dance can serve a variety of purposes, from the establishment and maintenance of social hierarchies to the expression of grief or happiness; the marking of important rites of passage to spiritual or religious worship; or the facilitation of courtship and socialization, in addition to the provision of commercial entertainment. While classical ballet often comes to mind as the “foundation” of all other dance forms, and is indeed often touted as such by teachers and parents of reluctant students alike (in addition to department heads in collegiate dance programs across the country), this distinction is inaccurate. So, too, are the distinctions that exist in many dance texts, dance departments, arts organizations, and granting agencies in which dance forms are categorized as “classical” or “traditional” with terms like folk, ethnic, or vernacular used to describe all forms that exist outside of the (formal) Western theatrical dance canon. In her groundbreaking essay, “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance,” Keali’inohomoku argues that “it is good of anthropology to think of ballet as a form of ethnic dance” and that “all forms of dance reflect the cultural traditions in which they developed,” therefore

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qualifying as “ethnic” dance. While her article has been included in countless dance anthologies (and undergraduate syllabi across the country), many false dichotomies persist, in which “ethnic” or “traditional” dances are seen as “primitive” and in need of “refinement” in order to become palatable for White audiences (Keali’inohomoku, 1969/1970, 39; McMains, 2010, 266; Gottschild, 1996, 41).5 Such conceptualizations of dance are problematic for several reasons. First, they establish an unnecessary division between the so-called high and low arts in which classical ballet is hierarchically ranked above all other forms. “Folk” or “ethnic” forms, to say nothing of musical theater dance, are seen as less important, less refined, and less deserving of scholarship, funding, and study. Traditionally, undergraduate dance history courses have focused on Western concert dance (again, ballet and modern), whereas other so-called “indigenous” dance forms have been relegated to the realm of anthropology (Dils and Albright, 2001, 370). A further problem is that these modes of classification perpetuate a unilineal evolutionary perspective, the very same sort that came into vogue during the nascent years of anthropology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries under men such as Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917). Even though such theories were eventually rejected by anthropologists (Scupin, 2011), classical ballet is still generally regarded as Europe’s crowning achievement in the performing arts, so to speak, following centuries of “primitive” dance there and elsewhere. This is compatible with how European civilization was seen as the final phase of Tylor’s tripartite model of cultural evolution, following “savagery” and “barbarism.” Few non-anthropologists are aware of these schematics, but they still percolate beneath the surface of contemporary dance, privileging ballet and certain forms of ballroom dance as more refined than their “vernacular” or “ethnic” counterparts (McMains, 2010, 266). As dance scholar Jane Desmond notes, many dance forms which originated among lower-class or subaltern populations are “refined” over time; they “present a trajectory of ‘upward mobility’” in which they are decontextualized, often desexualized, and codified for the purposes of commodification and dissemination (1993, 39). This holds true especially for improvisatory dance forms. Whereas classical ballet and modern dance privilege the role of the choreographer, thus dictating an often singular approach to dance criticism and scholarship, many other modes of creating artistic content have been discounted. These modes range from improvisation, ever important in tap (and in many other dance forms that owe their existence to the African diaspora), to the “collection” and staging of dances as exemplified in the work of anthropologists Katherine Dunham and Zora Neale Hurston (Kraut, 2010, 36).



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Choreography is important, of course, but it is not the only valid form of generating dance. In fact, there is currently much debate in the tap community about the importance of choreography versus improvisation, and the attempts of some tap dancers to apply the same standards and aesthetic preferences common in ballet and modern dance to tap (Ingram, Kodish, and Dornfeld, 2004); this is seen as detrimental by many but also helps to explain the rise and critical acclaim of Michelle Dorrance. As a choreographer, she presents tap in a way that fits within the confines of Western concert dance and garners appreciation from White audiences, programmers, and funding organizations.6 Lastly, the hierarchical rankings of dance that have historically privileged ballet over other dance forms are both ethnocentric and Eurocentric. The notion that ballet serves as the foundation of all other dance forms is grossly incorrect. While classical ballet training can provide a strong foundation for dancers who wish to engage in modern dance or musical theater, it can actually inhibit success in other dance forms, such as the many genres that fall under the heading of “African” dance.7 Such fallacies hold all other dance forms to European (and now Western) standards, and all dancers to European/Western aesthetic ideals. This is one of the many reasons why Misty Copeland’s success is so remarkable; dance literature is replete with accounts of women of color being told that they did not have the “right body” for ballet, from individual anecdotes to large-scale research studies (Green, 1999; McCarthy-Brown, 2011; Patton, 2011). VERTICALITY, MORALITY, AND THE DANCING BODY The title for this chapter comes from a contemporary dance class I observed at a children’s studio in the Philadelphia suburbs. The students, all White and all female, ranged in age from five to seven and were completing a set center floor warmup when their instructor told one little girl among them to “tuck in” her “derrière.” Given ballet’s historical associations with the court of Louis XIV, ballet vocabulary is French and it is common for instructors of even non-ballet classes to use French terminology when vocally correcting dancers they supervise. That being said, I wondered whether the little girl in question even knew the meaning of the term “derrière” and, perhaps more importantly, whether “tuck in” was really the best guidance for such a young dancer. Feminist critiques of classical ballet are quick to point out that women, in particular, are encouraged to take up as little space as possible; in writing about nineteenth-century romantic ballet, dance critic Deborah Jowitt rightly noted, “Insubstantiality, then, is close to godliness.” (1998, 209).8 Furthermore, the

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act of “tucking in” can serve to constrict movement, and injuries in ballet often result from poor teaching methods and lack of anatomical awareness. Many dance teachers have instead begun to encourage greater somatic awareness in their students, urging them, for example, to “lengthen” instead of “tuck in,” an instructional shift that places emphasis on alignment instead of trying to render certain parts of the body invisible (Green, 1999).9 Crucially, it is common for parents to enroll their children (especially their daughters) in dance classes for socialization and exercise, as well as to help them gain confidence and poise. Worth noting, however, is how attitudes towards dance and the dancing body have changed over time. Mid- to latenineteenth-century ballet was seen as low class by many, given its association with Parisian café concerts and British music halls. Even dancers of the Opéra National de Paris (Paris Opera), immortalized in the works of Edgar Degas, had to rely on patronage from influential male subscribers to the Opéra known as abonnés; in this case, the dancers’ economic vulnerability justified the link that is often made between dance and sexual exploitation (Garafola, 2001, 212), and even prostitution. Ballet master Carlo Blasis encouraged aspiring dancers to “acquire perpendicularity and an exact equilibrium” in his training manual of 1828, The Code of Terpsichore. Théophile Gautier, a nineteenth-century dance critic and balletomane, contrasted the careers of Marie Taglioni (a “Christian” dancer), with Fanny Elssler (a “pagan”), noting that in Elssler’s 1836 solo, Cachuca, she “twisted and turned with bewitching gestures that some viewers found voluptuous” (Anderson, 1977, 84). Gautier appreciated Elssler’s artistry but his denial of her Christianity was indicative of pervasive attitudes towards dance and the dancer’s body that to this day still persist. Much has been made in dance literature about Cartesian duality. Dance educator Jill Green writes, “Western culture creates the myth of a body/mind split. This split does not simply separate our bodies from our minds and favor mind over body. [It] removes us from the experience of our bodies” (1999, 82). Although she and many other dance educators attempt to counter this myth by emphasizing somatic awareness in their classes, most dancers still conceive of their bodies as something outside of themselves that must be strengthened, conditioned, or cultivated, bringing to mind the work of sociologist and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu and his assessment of physical capital (Bourdieu, 1990) (for further discussion of the body as an individuated entity, see chapter 8 by August in this volume, as well as chapter 10 by Thomas). Cartesian duality and the related notion of verticality underscore much of Western culture, especially religion, but it plays a special role in dance. As anthropologist Andreé Grau explains, verticality is often seen as a physical representation of spirituality; just as the architecture of a Christian-style cathe-



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dral or church building can be seen to indicate a reach towards heaven, so too can the upright carriage of the spine, indicating both control (over oneself and over others) and the defiance of gravity (2011, 10). Wires, harnesses, and the iconic satin pointe shoe allowed the female ballerina to literally rise above her body, its base desires, and any potential for immorality, thereby transcending traditional associations between dance and prostitution (Jowitt, 1998). Her ability to seemingly defy gravity remains a hallmark of classical ballet, with a wide array of jumps and partnering techniques used to maintain the illusion. Traces of the connection between verticality and spirituality can also be seen in contemporary pop culture. The Atlanta spinoff of the popular American reality television series Say Yes to the Dress regularly features the line “Let’s jack her up!” to indicate that it is time for sales personnel to give the bride an impromptu makeover in the hopes it will convince her to make a purchase. On its own, the significance of the word “up” might easily be overlooked, but on another long-running reality television show, Toddlers and Tiaras, the word surfaces within the context of “Jack ’er up to Jesus” while the mother of a young female beauty pageant contestant provides instruction to her daughter’s hairstylist. She states, “The higher the hair, the closer to God,” thus suggesting a literal connection between the height of her daughter’s hair and her spiritual ascension or Christian salvation. This notwithstanding, in the late 1920s, modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan dismissed classical ballet and its efforts to defy gravity. Given her interest in history and the dance forms of diverse cultures, we might wish that Duncan had extended her critique of ballet to a critique of Cartesian duality and the mind/body split in general, but in 1927 she laid out her vision of “worthy expression” in an essay entitled, “I See America Dancing,” in which she addressed the embodiment of American artistic identity. Duncan stated, “It seems to me monstrous for anyone to believe that the Jazz rhythm expresses America. Jazz rhythm expresses the South African savage.” Further, Duncan’s essay suggests there was a correct, even patriotic way of moving, thus authoring a direct link between morality, race, and the body. In her view, movement should be initiated from “the solar plexus, the temporal home of the soul,” and not “from the waist down,” as was popular in the “apelike convulsions” she observed in social dances of the time. Though nearly a century has passed since the publication of her essay, its overt racism is still reflected in the dance community, where questions of diversity and inclusivity remain contentious issues. Duncan’s ethnocentrism is evident in her dismissal of African-derived music and dance traditions, in which a lower sense of gravity is not only advantageous but encouraged (as in, “Get down!”). It also hints at the hierarchy of dance genres that remains in place to this day, especially in many dance studios and university programs across America.

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CONSTRUCTING THE “BALLET BODY” To understand how “ideal” bodies are constructed in dance, it is necessary to gain a familiarity with training methods. A typical ballet class generally ranges in length from forty-five minutes for children, to ninety minutes or more for students, pre-professionals, and professional dancers. Dress codes, comprising both written and unwritten rules, are generally enforced or, as is more common, followed voluntarily. Women wear a leotard and tights, forgoing additional undergarments; their hair is usually grown long and secured in a bun or French twist. Men generally wear a dance belt, a dance shirt, and tights. Baggy clothing is avoided in favor of exposing the dancers’ body contours (lines) and facilitating the instructor’s ability to see the body and give corrections. Ballet classes follow a set structure, and while the exact order of exercises and musical selections may vary from one class to another, the standard class always begins with a warmup performed at the barre, working from smaller movements up to larger ones and usually ending with an extended period of stretching. Dancers then move to the center of the studio space for practice of terre à terre, adagio, and allegro combinations designed to help with weight shifts, balance and control, and jumps, respectively. Next, the dancers perform traveling steps, turns, and leaps across the floor in small groups. Classes may include a final combination performed in the center of the floor, and generally end with a reverence in which port de bras (arm movements), and curtsies or bows are performed to show respect to the teacher and, if applicable, to the musical accompanist (who typically plays live music on piano to accompany the dance movements). Strategies of teaching ballet generally include the naming and/or demonstration of specific steps in the sequence in which they will be performed. Some instructors teach an entire class from the comfort of a stool or chair, wearing special dance sneakers for increased support, and calling upon a favored student to demonstrate steps. Studios (wide-open formal practice spaces) are generally outfitted with large, floor-to-ceiling mirrors in order to facilitate dancers’ self-correction and positioning at the barre or at the center of the floor, serve to reinforce existing hierarchies of preferred movement. Given Misty Copeland’s endorsement deals with brands such as Under Armour and Estée Lauder, it is perhaps unsurprising that in 2017 she published Ballerina Body: Dancing and Eating Your Way to a Leaner, Stronger, and More Graceful You. The title of her book says it all: the ballerina body must be forged through diet and exercise, and the female ballet dancer must embody both athleticism and grace—no easy feat, so far as muscle mass and flexibility are concerned. In fact, it is doubtful that a self-help book will do



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the trick; instead, many years of hard work are required. Corrections of a dancer’s positioning in ballet classes can take many forms, ranging from gentle encouragement and physical manipulation to harsher, more questionable techniques.10 Teachers routinely objectify and comment freely on specific components of their students’ bodies, correcting “bad feet” or “sloppy arms.” Dance educator Jill Green’s study of her own students revealed they harbored a Foucauldian sense of self-discipline among themselves and a dualistic view of their bodies, which they conceived of as “an accumulation of parts” (1999, 81), making them ripe for what Foucault refers to as an outsider’s gaze. Moreover, serious ballet training also results in blisters, lost toenails, and more serious injuries that are routinely accepted as occupational hazards. Dancers consciously work to modify their bodies, using various means to stretch their muscles, increase turnout (the rotation of the hips and legs, which causes the feet to point outward, allowing for greater extension of the legs), and “improve” the arches of their feet. Historically, some ballet schools were known to dismiss students for developing “incorrect” bodily proportions; eating disorders are also common and in some programs, diets are monitored and “weigh-ins” required (Green, 1999, 91).11 Is it any wonder, therefore, that many dancers regard their bodies as a separate entity apart from themselves that must be mastered? Grau reminds us that the views of René Descartes, the seventeenth-century French mathematician and philosopher to whom the mind/body split is generally attributed, have been somewhat distorted and that Cartesian duality is a Western construct that is not universally held (Grau, 2011), but as Green notes, it is often perpetuated by dominant cultures through the imposition of an “ideal body” as a form of maintaining control and status (Green, 1999, 82). This can help to explain why the success of Misty Copeland is so remarkable. According to dancer and scholar Tracey Owens Patton, dance allows for freedom in bodily movement but this freedom rarely extends to who is allowed to dance, especially as racial aesthetics are concerned. Patton, a dancer of color, came up against the effects of White privilege and systemic racism time and time again during her career. She experienced color-casting (in which preferential treatment was given to White or lighter-skinned dancers), tracking (in which White students were pushed towards ballet but students of color were pushed into modern, contemporary, tap, or hip-hop), and near constant criticism pertaining to her derrière, prompting her to ask12: What is it about my backside? I have tried to tuck, restrain, pray, and cajole it into submissiveness, but my bootyliciousness [. . .] refuses to listen. Outside of the dance world, I do not think about my bottom; but once I enter the ballet studio, I begin to have anxiety about my butt. If only I could flatten it somehow, my life in ballet would be easier. I would be able to avoid comments like, “How

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did you get in that tutu with your big butt?” [. . .]. While Josephine Baker, a complex and complicated icon in dance, enthralled all of Europe with her curvaceous body, beauty and scantily clad costumes, why was I suddenly meant to feel inferior and otherized?” (Patton, 2011, 117)

Unfortunately, her experiences are not unique. Because ballet is an ethnic dance form, it developed the same aesthetic preferences that one might expect of any other dance form. Historically, these preferences have defined a homogenous, all-female, all-White corps de ballet indicative of a Eurocentric aesthetic. Ballet has since come to enjoy an increasingly international appeal, however, and its racial politics have not kept up. There are many reasons that women of color experience discrimination in classical ballet: lack of role models, lack of access to training opportunities, “colorblind” casting policies that are anything but, perceived anatomical differences seen as incompatible with ballet, internalized racism (in which dancers accept the notion of their own incompatibility), not to mention overt racism on the part of teachers, artistic directors, and fellow dancers. Dancers of color even have to use paint or makeup to custom-dye their ballet pointe shoes so that they align with their skin tones and personal shades of “nude.”13 Scholar Nyama McCarthy-Brown notes an additional problem with the story lines and characters of traditional storybook ballets like Giselle, Swan Lake, or Sleeping Beauty, explaining how the female roles in these ballets emphasize a delicate softness “in direct opposition to the image of the strong Black woman” (2011, 394). This may help to explain why so few artistic directors of ballet cast women of color and why men of color generally experience an overall greater degree of success, however slight it may be. CONSTRUCTING THE “TAP BODY” In many ways, tap is the polar opposite of ballet, and has certainly been characterized as such.14 Journalists regularly dub tap “fun,” “cool,” or even “ridiculous” but as scholar Cheryl Willis argues, “the musicality of tap dance, which is percussive, polyrhythmic, swinging and dependent on the interrelationship of the dancer and musician, is a direct outgrowth of the African aesthetic” (1998, 152). Furthermore, tap dancers (especially rhythm tap dancers) use gravity and the floor to their advantage; indeed, the art form could not exist without contact between the dancer and the floor. A “typical” tap class can be hard to describe due to changes in transmission of the art form over time. As an indigenous American art form, tap dance developed “on the streets” and it was there that most early hoofers honed their craft.15 Dress codes, for example, are virtually nonexistent in tap



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except in studio settings for young children. In rhythm tap, as opposed to Broadway or musical theater tap, is not uncommon to see professional dancers wearing jeans, even in lengthy rehearsals, and individuality is generally accepted. Shoes, as might be expected, are a big deal for tap dancers and can cost several hundred dollars. Historically, black tap shoes have been the most common but white shoes are increasing in popularity, as are custom-designed shoes in different colors, especially among young competitive dancers. Some female dancers prefer to dance in high heels, while others prefer flat, Oxfordstyle tap shoes.16 Classes for young dancers may include exercises at the barre but most tap classes start with a warmup performed at the center of the studio floor. Warmups vary greatly from one teacher to another; some have set warmups that “regulars” can memorize and perform with ease each class while others rely on dancers being able to follow along as steps are demonstrated. Classes may, but don’t always, include traveling steps performed across the floor and lengthy periods for stretching are uncommon. Most professional-level classes focus on the teaching of a combination (of movements) and may also include time for improvisation. There is no standard ritual for ending a tap class as there is in ballet, but students may clap for their teacher or engage in a final call and response exchange. Most professional and pre-professional tap dancers train at festivals, jams, master classes, workshops, and cutting sessions, often taking classes in other genres of dance including ballet, jazz, modern, hip-hop, Swing/Lindy Hop, and African. Few tap dancers can make a living solely through performing, however, and as such, many have “side hustles” ranging from teaching and choreographing (usually for studio competition teams or local musical theater companies), to judging dance competitions or even operating their own clothing lines.17 While there is no question as to how an “average” ballet dancer ought to look or what sort of body he (or more likely she) ought to have, this is not the case with tap. This is due, in part, to its history, which included the interactions of Irish indentured servants and enslaved Africans in the 1600s, Irish and African laborers in the 1700s, and finally, between African American freemen and Irish American performers in the 1800s (Hill, 2010). As such, questions of authenticity, ownership, race, and even allegations of “reverse racism” are not uncommon in tap. Hollywood films and Broadway musicals have presented one sort of “ideal” tap dancer (White, athletic, smiling, and skilled in ballroom dancing), while films like Gregory Hines’s Tap (1989) and shows like Savion Glover’s Noise/Funk (1996) have given dancers of color a platform, reasserted African American contributions to the form, and redefined the “look” of the tap dancer.18

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Much has been made of the posture of both Hines and Glover in performance. Dance critic and scholar Sally Sommer wrote: Gregory Hines was admired as a gracious and charming performer onstage, in film and in television. But he was also a dance revolutionary who took the upright tap tradition, bent it over and slammed it to the ground [. . .] Hunkered over like a prizefighter, unsmiling, he cocked his head and stared at the floor as if looking for answers [. . .] He renewed tap by roughing it up and giving it emotional weight (Sommer, 2003).

Similarly, reviews of Glover’s Bare Soundz (2008) reminded readers that Glover “wasn’t always the smiling kind” and had a propensity for “covering his face with his signature dreads” (Strauss, 2008). Many young rhythm tappers seek to emulate Glover’s style, but overall, there is little consensus as to how a tap dancer ought to look or what sort of body he or she ought to have. While injuries certainly occur in tap, eating disorders and intentional forms of body modification are uncommon. The genre is, in many ways, more forgiving than ballet, and tap dancers of all shapes and sizes may perform well into old age, as they do in the iconic “Challenge” scene in the 1989 film Tap. Of course, the tap genre is not immune to the very same Eurocentric and ethnocentric forms of racism that plague ballet. Many histories of tap cite the 1739 Stono slave rebellion in the colony of South Carolina as the official “start” of tap because the drums that had been used to facilitate communication between Africans enslaved on different plantations were subsequently outlawed, thus requiring the use of body percussion instead. While this may or may not be true, slavery, blackface minstrelsy, segregation, and racism all played a role in tap’s development and many dancers found themselves caught up in a performance industry that both catered to and perpetuated racist expectations concerning the presentation of Blackness through Black bodies.19 African American dance artist Fayard Nicholas (1914–2006) of the legendary Nicholas Brothers recounted how, when rehearsing a song entitled, “All Dark People Is Light on Their Feet,” from the 1937 production of Babes in Arms, his mother told him: Don’t sing “All dark people is light on their feet,” sing, “All dark people are light on their feet!” So, we did that opening night. After the show, the stage manager told us, “Hey, that’s not the right way! Say ‘is’ light on their feet, not ‘are’ light on their feet.” “Well,” I said, “that’s the way we talk” (Frank, 1994, 70).

As this anecdote illustrates, Fayard Nicholas (who grew up in Philadelphia) and many of his contemporaries were very much essentialized, directed to perform caricatured depictions of Blackness (including stereotypes of



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African American language), and valued more for their purportedly exotic, happy-go-lucky, and childlike demeanors than for their innovative artistry. Drawing upon the work of cultural historian and dance critic Brenda Dixon Gottschild, scholar of African American dance Thomas DeFrantz argues, “American social constructions [. . .] have historically displaced and invisibilized their African wellsprings, [and] tap has been trivialized or infantilized as a vernacular form, accessible to all but without the patina of profundity allowed art” (undated [online], 1). Unfortunately, many dancers of color have internalized this trivialization. In the documentary Plenty of Good Women Dancers (2004) produced by the Philadelphia Folklore Project, one dancer recalled during an interview that tap was underappreciated because people thought it was: [. . .] like an Uncle Tom–type of thing. Because Blacks was going in for just ballet and modern jazz and the heck with tap (sic) . . . this was the sixties . . . There wasn’t any support at all, because everybody was—they thought that was Uncle Tom dancing in the Black dancing schools. [. . .] they really didn’t advocate it, so to speak, as anything that—to be proud of (Ingram and Kodish, 1994, 31).

CONCLUSION It would be great to live in a world where skin color truly did not matter, where the notion of the “ideal body” was thoroughly recognized as a social construct, and where the various parts of the body from which movement can originate were not assigned moral credence, but it is clear we are not yet there. Ballet dancers of every ethnicity undergo grueling routines, modifying their bodies in pursuit of near-impossible ideals based on centuries-old Eurocentric standards; dancers of color, and Black dancers, however, remain the most disadvantaged by this system. Tap dancers enjoy greater freedom concerning their physique, but systemic racism continues to marginalize their art form, as evidenced (to cite just one example) by its absence from or “elective” status in many college dance programs. While it would be incorrect to attribute Michelle Dorrance’s success to her Whiteness, her multiform training and aesthetic sensibilities allow her to present tap in a way that follows many of the same choreographic schematics as ballet or modern dance. Her performed works render tap more palatable to White audiences and, perhaps, more importantly, to mainstream arts funding sources. In these ways, her success constitutes an example of both ethnocentrism in the dance world and White privilege at work. Furthermore, while the historic nature of Misty Copeland’s groundbreaking promotion to principal dancer deserves recognition, she is light-skinned; would a dark-skinned

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woman of color have received such a promotion? Like Dorrance, Copeland deserves her many accolades, and while it is unfortunate that they must always accompany mention of her race, the successes of both women hint at the hope of a society that may eventually make the claim to post-racialism and actually deserve the attribute. NOTES 1.  In 1962, African American Arthur Mitchell became the first principal dancer of color at New York City Ballet and was eventually followed by Albert Evans, also African American. 2.  These classes ranged from “beginner” amateur or recreational-level classes to pre-professional “advanced” or professional-level “company” classes; the latter generally comprises a daily ballet class, usually taught in the morning for members of a specific dance company. 3. Additional performance observations included Philadelphia-based companies BalletX (contemporary ballet), Philadanco! (ballet and modern), Kun-Yang Lin/ Dancers (modern), Rennie Harris Pure Movement (hip-hop), Passion y Arte (flamenco), Usiloquy Dance Designs (Classical Indian dance), Kariamu and Company (African/Umfundalai), Brian Sanders JUNK (modern/postmodern), plus countless smaller companies and solo artists in addition to larger touring companies from around the country. 4.  Anthropologist Judith Lynn Hanna extends this definition to “human behavior (composed from the dancers’ perspective) of purposeful, intentionally rhythmical and culturally patterned sequences of non-verbal body movement other than ordinary motor activities, the motion having inherent aesthetic value” (1979, 48). 5.  As dancer and scholar Brenda Dixon Gottschild explains, “There seems to be a general assumption on the part of Europeanist cultures that African visual arts, music and dance are raw materials that are improved upon and elevated when they are appropriated and finessed by European artists” (1996, 41). 6.  Philadelphia tap dancer and ethnographer Germaine Ingram writes, “The ambition of some latter-day tap disciples to establish tap as a ‘serious’ art form has resulted in emphasis on the proscenium stage and concert format as preferred presentation modes; in uninformed distinctions between ‘routines’ and choreography; and in celebration of lengthy pieces [. . .] over the pithy, carefully composed numbers [of the] twenties, thirties and forties” (in Ingram and Kodish, 1994, 3). 7.  The quotation marks in this case serve as reminder that while many scholars have identified common characteristics of African dance (Hurston, 1999 [1933]; Thompson, 1999 [1966]; Stearns, 1968; Asante, 1985; Gottschild, 1996; Malone, 1998), African dance should not be viewed as a monolith. 8.  Little has changed; Lynn Garafola writes that “Like her nineteenth-century forebear, today’s ballerina, an icon of teen youth, athleticism, and anorexic vulnerability, incarnates a feminine ideal defined overwhelmingly by men” (2001, 210).



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  9.  An article written by ballet dancer Jessica Zeller about beloved New York– based coach and teacher Maggie Black used the word “alignment” thirty times in as many pages, emphasizing the importance of a strong foundation and “the function of the entire torso as a unit, the pelvis and the back always coordinated during movement” (2009, 61). This proves that for many dance teachers, old habits die hard. 10.  The 2011 documentary First Position, for example, shows a teacher slapping his young student; similarly, stereotypical portrayals of “old school” teachers banging their canes on the dance studio floor are not that far off mark. 11.  Weigh-ins were conducted at my college as well, even though it was not a conservatory. However, by the time of my enrollment, the practice had ended. 12.  As Patton explains, “Racial tracking refers to a segregated education system that continues today where often Euro- and Asian American students are placed in college prep courses, while Black and Latino students are placed on a vocational track. If one thinks of ballet as the “college prep track,” then all other dance styles where ethnic minorities thrive and are accepted in lead roles would be the “vocational track” (2011, 114). 13.  An example of this practice and the resulting ballet pointe shoes can be seen on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. The so-called pancaking of shoes, however, may not continue for long, as Freed of London has introduced a new line of pointe shoes for dancers of color in 2108. The new shoes are available in “bronze” and “brown” shades. 14. Gottschild notes, “Although these two massive cultural constellations—European and African—are fused and interwoven in many aspects, they also manifest distinct, discrete, and somewhat opposing characteristics and lend themselves to discussion as binary opposites, if not separate systems” (1996, xiv). 15.  This didn’t stop early twentieth-century tap enthusiasts from trying to codify and commodify tap. In the 1930s, at least thirty-two tap manuals were published. Titles such as Home Lessons in Tap Dancing (1932), Step Dancing: A Course of Twenty Lessons For the Beginner (1935), and Tip Top Tapping: Simplified Lessons in Tap Dancing (1937) suggested that tap could be learned by anyone without the benefit of a proper teacher. As such, traditional modes of transmission were challenged by do-it-yourself manuals and illustrated step glossaries. 16.  Flat shoes became especially popular for tap-dancing women in the late 1990s, following the success of Savion Glover’s Broadway hit Bring in ‘da Noise/Bring in ‘da Funk, but heels are making a comeback, and not just in musical theater tap, thanks to artists like Dormeshia Sumbry Edwards, who danced in Noise/Funk, Chloe Arnold, director and star of the popular commercial tap “band” the Syncopated Ladies, and Sarah Reich, who dances with Arnold’s group and tours with the popular cover band Postmodern Jukebox. 17.  This is not to say that dancers in other genres always enjoy greater financial stability. But because company positions and regular performance seasons are essentially nonexistent in tap, gigs tend to be short term and contract-based. 18. According to Patton: “A [marked] distinction between tap and hoofing is [well] defined and can be seen with dancers like Fred Astaire who gave tap a ballroom dance look, or Gene Kelly who incorporated ballet into tap, which popularized and

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normalized tap for White consumption, by erasing the African and the U.S. connection of the enslaved. Whereas hoofers like Bill Bailey, the Nicholas Brothers, Sammy Davis Jr., LaVaughn Robinson, Gregory Hines, and Savion Glover showcased the beauty of tap, and therefore, the participation of the Black body” (2011, 110). 19.  The popularity of blackface entertainment, coupled with the growing demand for jazz during the Harlem Renaissance, resulted in the homogenization, codification, and caricaturizing of African American cultural expression for White audiences. For example, the early twentieth century saw the production of numerous tap shows and films with titles such as Blackbirds, Black and Tan, Black and Blue, Black Broadway, Blackberries, Blackouts, Black Manhattan, and so on.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, Jack. Ballet and Modern Dance: A Concise History. Princeton, NJ: Dance Horizons, 1977. Asante, Kariamu Welsh. “Commonalities in African Dance: An Aesthetic Foundation,” reprinted in Moving Histories/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader, edited by Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright, 144–151. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2001 [1985]. Blasis, Carlo. “The Code of Terpsichore,” translated by R. Barton and reprinted in “Dance as a Theatre Art: Source Readings in Dance History from 1581 to the Present,” edited by Selma Jeanne Cohen, 45–52. New Jersey: Princeton Book Company, 1992 [1828]. Bourdieu, Pierre. “Artistic Taste and Cultural Capital.” Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates (1990): 205–215. Carter, Alexandra, ed. The Routledge Dance Studies Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Cohen, Selma Jeanne, ed. Dance as a Theatre Art: Source Readings in Dance History from 1581 to the Present. Princeton, NJ: Dance Horizons, 1974. Copeland, Roger, and Marshall Cohen, eds. What is Dance? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. DeFrantz, Thomas. [undated]. “‘Being Savion Glover’: Black Masculinity, Translocation and Tap Dance.” Accessed July 7, 2009. http://web.mit.edu/people/defrantz/ Documents/begloverdoneshort.pdf. Desmond, Jane C. “Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies.” Cultural Critique 26 (1993): 33–63. Dils, Ann, and Ann Cooper Albright, eds. Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2001. Duncan, Isadora. “I See America Dancing,” reprinted in What is Dance? edited by Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen, 264–265. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983 [1927]. Frank, Rusty E. Tap! The Greatest Tap Dance Stars and their Stories, 1900–1955. New York: De Capo Press, 1994.



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Garafola, Lynn. “The Travesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century Ballet,” in Moving Histories/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader, edited by Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright, 210–217. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2001. Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1996. Grau, Andreé. “Dancing Bodies, Spaces/Places, and the Senses: A Cross-Cultural Investigation.” Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, 3, Nos. 1 and 2 (2011): 5–24. Green, Jill. “Somatic Authority and the Myth of the Ideal Body in Dance Education.” Dance Research Journal, 31, No. 2 (1999): 80–100. Hanna, Judith Lynn. To Dance is Human. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1979. Hill, Constance Valis. Tap Dancing America: A Cultural History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Hurston, Zora Neale. “Characteristics of Negro Expression,” reprinted in Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin’ and Slam Dunking: A Reader in African American Expression, edited by Gena Dagel Caponi, 293–308. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999 [1933]. Ingram, Germaine, and Debora Kodish. Stepping in Time, Philadelphia Folklore Project: Works in Progress, Special Commemorative Issue, 8, No. 2 (1994). Ingram, Germaine, Debora G. Kodish, Barry Dornfeld. “Plenty of Good Women Dancers: African American Women Hoofers from Philadelphia.” DVD Video. Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia Folklore Project, 2004. Jowitt, Deborah. “In Pursuit of the Sylph: Ballet in the Romantic Period,” in The Routledge Dance Studies Reader, edited by Alexandra Carter, 203–213. New York: Routledge, 1998. Keali’inohomoku, Joann. “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance.” Impulse Magazine reprinted by permission of the author in Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader, edited by Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright, 33–43. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2001 [1969–1970]. Kraut, Anthea. “Recovering Hurston, Reconsidering the Choreographer,” in The Routledge Dance Studies Reader, 2nd edition, edited by Alexandra Carter and Janet O’Shea, 35–46. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. Malone, Jacqui. “Keep to the Rhythm and You’ll Keep to Life: Meaning and Style in African American Vernacular Dance,” in The Routledge Dance Studies Reader, edited by Alexandra Carter, 230–235. London: Routledge, 1998. McCarthy-Brown, Nyama. “Dancing in the Margins: Experiences of African American Ballerinas.” Journal of African American Studies, 15, Issue 3 (2011): 385–408. McMains, Juliet. “Reality Check: Dancing With the Stars and the American Dream,” in The Routledge Dance Studies Reader, 2nd edition, edited by Alexandra Carter and Janet O’Shea, 261–272. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. Patton, Tracey Owens. “Final I Just Want to Get My Groove On: An African American Experience with Race, Racism, and the White Aesthetic in Dance.” The Journal of Pan African Studies, 4, Issue 6 (2011): 104–121.

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Scupin, Raymond. Cultural Anthropology: A Global Perspective. New Jersey: Pearson, 2011. Sommer, Sally R. “An Appreciation; Gregory Hines: From Time to Step to Timeline.” New York Times, August 14, 2003. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/14/ arts/an-appreciation-gregory-hines-from-time-step-to-timeless.html. Sparshott, F. Off the Ground: First Steps to a Philosophical Consideration of Dance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. Stearns, Marshall and Jean. Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance. London: The Macmillan Company, 1968. Straus, Rachel. “Savion Glover: Bare Soundz.” July 8, 2009. http://www.ballet.co.uk/ magazines/yr_08/dec08/rs_rev_savion_glover_1108.htm. Accessed April 5, 2014. Thompson, Robert Farris. “An Aesthetic of the Cool,” reprinted in Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin’ and Slam Dunking: A Reader in African American Expression, edited by Gena Dagel-Caponi, 72–86. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999 [1966]. Willis, Cheryl. “Tap Dance: Manifestation of the African Aesthetic.” In African Dance: An Artistic, Historical, and Philosophical Inquiry, edited by Kariamu Welsh Asante, 145–159. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1998. Zeller, Jessica. “Teaching through Time: Tracing Ballet’s Pedagogical Lineage in the work of Maggie Black.” Dance Chronicle, 32, no. 1 (2009): 57–88.

Chapter Ten

The Year Is 2093 Reanimation from Frankenstein to Prometheus as Sci-fi Metaphor for (Dis)Embodied Female Futures and Colonization of Space Jamie A. Thomas

“I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.” —Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)

INTRODUCTION: SCIENCE FICTION BECOMES SCIENCE FACT Visionary civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Star Trek fan. His chance encounter in 1967 with Nichelle Nichols, the actress cast as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura of the starship Enterprise, convinced her to stick with the role. “For the first time on television,” Dr. King reportedly said to her, “we [African Americans] will be seen as we should be seen everyday. As intelligent, quality, beautiful people who sing, dance, and everything, but who can go into space.”1 King was speaking about the negative stereotyping of African Americans in entertainment media, and his belief that changing this would help to precipitate lasting change in other sectors of society. Star Trek had made inroads by making Nichols the first African American to portray a non-subservient role on screen; her Black female embodiment was a stand-in for all Blacks. Alongside Nichols, George Takei had been cast as Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu. At the time, the Japanese American internment during World War II was so recent, that Takei himself was a survivor of one such internment camp in Kansas, where his family had been forcibly relocated before his high school and college years. But the science fiction 201

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television saga cast Takei and Nichols’ embodiments in a renewed light. Together with their spaceship crew, Sulu and Uhura would “go boldly where no man has gone before.” As early as the 1960s then, narratives of speculative fabulation were reaching wide and varied audiences, using their diverse casts and adventurous story lines as a platform for countering racism in America. The adventures of the starship Enterprise buoyed the ongoing Space Race, by championing a reality in which human exploration of deep space was already possible. Through science fiction, space exploration was romanticized as the next logical step in human scientific exploration, and one which would benefit all of humanity. By the time Apollo 11 landed astronauts on the moon on July 20, 1969, Star Trek had already become a well-worn metaphor for confronting the unknown, though it wouldn’t be until 1983 that European American astrophysicist and engineer Dr. Sally Ride would actually become the first American woman in space. Dr. Mae Jemison would eventually follow her as the sixteenth American woman in space, and the first African American woman, bringing her talents as a physician and chemical engineer onto the space shuttle Endeavour in 1992. Today, science fiction continues to place humans in contexts far outside our present reality, in a projection of achievements we may one day accomplish. Typified by technologized settings and adventurous and futuristic staging, the science fiction genre often imagines how technology and/or altered environmental factors impact life as we know it. But the genre’s descriptions of unfamiliar technologies, creatures, and planets are not spontaneous inventions of our imaginations. Rather, they evolve with human experience, often referencing previous visual and linguistic imagery in increasingly intricate ways. Science fiction and science fact routinely mingle in these creative knowledge pathways, blending known reality with the potentials of the unknown. With fiction pushing us to envision technologies, landscapes, and bodies we cannot yet know to be real, it is no surprise that we name both our fictional and actual spacecraft in an articulation of this wonder, from Enterprise to Endeavour. Consistent with this picturing of ourselves among the cosmos, present-day astronomers naming and describing newly discovered planets regularly participate in worlding. Their worlding practices convert the probabilities of faraway gaseous masses, and planets revolving around other suns, or exoplanets, into relatable worlds for popular audiences. As a cultural anthropologist of astronomers, Lisa Messeri has observed: “When not enough observational data exists to transform planets into worlds, exoplanet astronomers shape these planets through language,” relying “on the language of ‘Earths,’ ‘Neptunes,’ and ‘ocean worlds.’”2 Where this extensive use of metaphor surfaces as a normal and necessarily symbiotic pathway across



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the practice of both science and science fiction, it participates in “creating a visual language” that flows from existing ideas.3 And where investigations of the cosmos continue to influence science fiction, so, too, do our fascinations with the mysteries of the human body. In fact, science fiction can claim its earliest start in the narrative of Victor Frankenstein, the eponymous physician of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, who sparks life into an inanimate mass of reassembled body parts. Two hundred years ago in England, as Shelley crafted what arguably became the first literary work of science fiction, electricity was still an emerging phenomenon, and a technology whose applications had yet to be fully understood. Though the invention of the portable, automated external defibrillator was yet a long way off (more than a century ahead), Frankenstein posits science’s abilities to reclaim life after death not as speculation, but as fact. This portrayal of the reanimation of life, this revivification of the human body, is the subject of this chapter.4 As a sci-fi fan myself, and sociocultural linguist, I bring attention to Frankenstein: Or The Modern Prometheus and other related narratives as a grouping of science fiction, or reanimation science subgenre. In this chapter, I trace a genealogy of reanimation science across key films in an examination of how the subgenre persuasively uses language in its manipulation of life and death. Through visioning reanimation as a transformative and reproductive process controlled by male scientists, physicians, and engineers, or “mad scientists,” films like The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962), Passengers (2016), and Prometheus (2012) disempower, disable, and disfigure women by turning them into monsters, zombies, and alien incubators. These acts of violence dehumanize by manipulating the animacy of women characters through imagery that glorifies Western civilization. Lowered to animal states of lesser sentience and greater vulnerability in these films, women’s future bodies are presented as acceptable objects of the mad scientist’s experimentation. Here, I aim to show how these science fiction films act as a public discourse of science, and create a prophetic vision in which gender inequality will never cease and people of color will have little to no influence. Within the realm of science fiction, where our terrestrial realities are frequently suspended in order to embrace worlds where anything—even equality—is possible, why, I ask, is it that women appear to have reached a glass ceiling in the futuristic reanimation subgenre? These are ideas and futurisms that we must, as zoologist and feminist theorist Donna Haraway suggests, continue to pay attention to, because they influence our terrestrial thinking as to which changes may be possible, and what redress is needed for a more environmentally sound and socially just multispecies future here on Earth. For these reasons, Haraway proposes a role

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for speculative feminism in our examination of futurisms, and attention to the erasure of female perspectives in Western knowledge-seeking.5 Activist and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, too, has pointed out that the explosive popularity of outer space science fiction is no coincidence.6 With the original Star Wars film debuting in 1977, just after the horrors of the Vietnam War, American teenagers, along with the wider public, found relief in picturing themselves within the iconic story line as “rebels,” rather than the imperialists that they were (and are), as passive beneficiaries of the American militaryindustrial complex. Their denial was an expression of “psychosis,” as AbuJamal puts it, with the revelation of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader’s blood relation surfacing as an allegory for the fate of the colonized subject, errantly deluded into thinking rebellion was ever his own idea.7 GENDERING, ANIMACY, AND THE VOICE OF SCIENCE IN TELEVISION AND FILM As a child of the 1980s, I read 3-2-1 Contact Magazine, and watched Dr. Mae Jemison launch into space only a few short years after the tragedy of the space shuttle Challenger. For decades, my father was the only Black aeronautical engineer at his firm, and on Saturday mornings he and my educator mother paid it forward by volunteering with the local chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). As part of NSBE’s Excell Program, they taught mini-seminars in math and physics to young Black middle-school students in classrooms organized at Cal State University Dominguez Hills. It was through the Excell Program that my sister and I learned skills in basic computer programming, gained early exposure to algebra, and participated in launching homemade rockets alongside our male counterparts. Through Excell, and because of seeing Dr. Jemison on television, I attended Space Camp as the only Black eleven-year-old in my age group, confident there was a place for me among the cosmos. My expectation of belonging had been livened and animated by role models and experiences that valued my voice, and normalized my sense of exploration. Because I grew up watching Quantum Leap, Sliders, Doctor Who, and Star Trek: The Next Generation (each of which featured men in mad scientist roles) with my family, it wasn’t until much later that I learned about Lt. Nyota Uhura, and the role series creator Gene Roddenberry had outlined for her as the translator, linguist, and communications officer of the Enterprise. Eventually studying Swahili in college as part of my journey in becoming a linguist and anthropologist, I came to appreciate the meanings of her name in nyota (star) and “uhura” as a derivative of uhuru (freedom). Now, more than ever, I can understand how



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seeing Lt. Uhura on television inspired a young Dr. Jemison to aim for space, even though Uhura, born in 2233, was from the distant future, because she has also become a powerful muse to me. This may have been why I was surprised at the controversy over Doctor Who’s casting of a woman (Jodie Whittaker) for the very first time in the role of the Doctor, beginning in its 2018 season. Since the British series’ 1963 start, the Doctor has been a Time Lord, an alien who travels across time and space saving civilizations using an esoteric understanding of astrophysics, and instead of dying, self-regenerates into a new bodily reincarnation and personality. Therefore, it was rather ludicrous that some fans found it implausible for a woman to portray the role. Fans taking to Twitter to voice their displeasure were met with an equal and opposite response. Miriam-Webster’s Dictionary tweeted: “‘Doctor’ has no gender in English.”8 Yet another user tweeted on the irony of the debate: “Oh great a female Doctor Who. What next? Female real doctors? Female pilots? Female scientists? Female sisters and mothers? Female WOMEN?!”9 Where these tweets deftly undermined the gendering of science fiction and its implications for everyday real life, they also amplified how words like “doctor” are routinely imbued with additional social and cultural meanings that serve to maintain the gender binary. Though “doctor” is not intrinsically gendered, and can describe all sorts of people (including those who are not physicians, but PhDs), the tendency to refer to women as “female doctors” and men as simply “doctors,” is a form of overlexification that inherently constructs men as standard and women as substandard. These uses of language persist in subjugating women, even as White men are increasing in their college dropout rates in the United States, and by 2026, 57 percent of American college students will be women.10 But the cynicism of some fans toward the possibility of a Time Lord with a female embodiment additionally relays an even larger problem with the gender segregation of scientist and physician roles in television and film. A study of fourteen television programs popular among middle school–aged children, including CSI, Friends, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and The X Files, found that if female scientists were portrayed, they were more likely to show qualities of dependence, caring, and romantic interest.11 This selective inclusion, by default, assists in the social construction of scientists’ independent and dominant behaviors as largely male and masculine. Such media images are all the more important, because by the age of twelve, interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) declines for both boys and girls, and bias, often unconscious or implicit, results in the exclusion of girls from advanced educational opportunities in STEM and related fields.12 Gender disparities in STEM, in turn, appear to provide evidence of biologically driven differences in abilities and interests, even though there is no factual

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basis for this. Crucially, misleading views such as these are likely to be disseminated through science fiction films, as well as hospital dramas and crime procedurals, which are where people generally receive their greatest exposure to science, technology, and medicine.13 This is as opposed to other sources of information, including news, documentaries, and educational programming. Popular scientist narratives project a voice that, similar to Abu-Jamal’s observations of Star Wars, communicate science and space exploration as achievements endowed with “extra-human authority,” as communication studies scholar Thomas Lessl has identified, constructing a powerful mythology that purposes our venture in the heavenly cosmos.14 This voice of science is often represented in the “mad scientist” trope popularized through science fiction film, and particularly through adaptations of Frankenstein, which portray men in the mechanical creation and (re)animation of life. Modern Western society approaches synthetic creation as an enduring limitation of science, the achievement of which, as historian of science Kurt W. Back describes, is the “culmination of the acquisition of knowledge and the power that this knowledge brings.”15 This patriarchal-God-complex obsession with creating life effects a paradoxical and dehumanizing exclusion of women (without whom organic human life cannot be birthed) that also reflects their societal “alienation from science itself.”16 Where male-dominated science and science fiction venerates an ability to imbue inanimate materials with animacy, it further implicates reanimation as a highly gendered political act, one which uses, to borrow from linguistic theorist Mel Y. Chen, “animacy hierarchies to manipulate, affirm, and shift the ontologies that matter the world.”17 The power in this manipulation comes from an ability to delineate who among us is most human and least animal, with “animal” analogizing various forms of deviance and alterity, including femininity and queer sexualities. In the present chapter, I build upon Chen’s argument to theorize the Western masculine persona as additionally empowered through its endowing with the ability to reanimate, or imbue with life force that which is understood as without life, or inanimate. This is exactly how the story of Frankenstein explores the most ultimate of scientific knowledges, by drawing upon the myth of Prometheus, named for a word meaning “forethought” or “foresight” in the Indo-European language of Ancient Greek. As humankind’s greatest benefactor, Prometheus was the immortal male god that created “man” from clay. He later stole fire from Mount Olympus to give it to humankind, effectively providing a pathway to human independence and enlightenment. Though his crime was discovered by Zeus, Prometheus never showed remorse, and he was subsequently sentenced to a punishment of eternal torture; by day, a vulture would pluck out his liver (understood by the Ancient



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Greeks as the seat of emotion), and by night, his liver would regenerate, enabling the torture to continue. Revered by some as a rebel and an inquisitive muse, Prometheus, for others, has come to symbolize the dangers of corrupting the “natural” order, particularly because of ethical questions posed by biomedical research on the body. This spectre of ethical overreach continues to be the subject of most popular films concerning science, with male physicians and scientists facilitating discovery and enlightenment through secret experimentation on humans and animals.18 Though these films do largely piece together dramatic and horrific story lines that illustrate problems with the mad scientist’s zealous pursuit, they use reanimation science as a symbol of men’s potential to conquer life indefinitely, without the buy-in of women. READING FRANKENSTEIN AS CRITICAL FEMINIST DISCOURSE ON REANIMATION SCIENCE When it comes to popular sci-fi and the many ideas associated with reanimation science, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein offers numerous examples of language as a tool of inequality in relationships between scientists and their test subjects. For example, at the very end of the novel, as the reanimated monster voices an indictment of his human creator, he describes how his silencing by others mirrors his societal marginalization. You, who call Frankenstein your friend, seem to have knowledge of my crimes and his misfortunes. But, in the detail which he gave you of them, he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I endured, wasting in impotent passions. [. . .] Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all human kind (sic) sinned against me? [. . .] Even now my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice.19

While the monster describes his isolated existence as a torturous purgatory, he also connects his plight with notions of criminal deviance, but also injustice. This layering of ideas within the use of language signals what linguists identify as a connection between language and discourse, the set of “broader ideas shared by people in a society about how the world works.”20 Grasping the multilayering of ideas in discourse requires an investment in contextualizing meanings within their sociohistorical context. Accordingly, discourse also refers to any and all context-specific uses of connected language in everyday activity, including settings of news, entertainment, literature, and film.21 Bringing these definitions together, discourses are

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worldviews that surface in verbal talk (the things that we say), as well as everyday textual and visual-graphic communication (e.g., SMS/texting, billboards, facial expressions, hand gestures, etc.). Through discourse, we explicitly state how we feel about our social world, and also implicate further meanings. Sociocultural linguists investigating discourse can contribute to the dismantling of hegemony by helping to uncover how uses of language and communication support systems of power and patterns of social inequality.22 This intent to engage language and discourse as sites in the reproduction of power is understood as a critical stance in linguistics.23 And in Frankenstein, where the monster’s experience of linguistic inequality implicates broader concerns about social inequality, the discourse gathers additional meaning with attention to disempowerment as conceptualized in nineteenth-century Europe. As Mary Shelley imagined him, the monster was a nonconsenting accomplice to Frankenstein’s experimentation, in a time when men were increasing their societal domination through surgical dissection, scientific experiments in reanimation, and bureaucratic and regulatory oversight. England was undergoing a period of rapid industrialization and biomedical innovation, accompanied by turbulent class shifts, identity politics, and professionalization of healing sciences. The Anatomy Act of 1832, for example, revised the earlier Murder Act of 1752, by providing that bodies beyond those of executed murderers could be used for dissection. With the rise of biomedicine, more and more bodies were needed for anatomical studies and the training of surgeons. Cadavers were routinely obtained by grave robbers known as “resurrectionists,” and additionally, through murder. The new legislation aimed to intervene by limiting licenses for the practice of anatomy, and allocating only the unclaimed corpses at hospitals, prisons, and public workhouses to anatomists. But some cynics continued to protest both the legislation and the practice of anatomy, believing that corpses would still be consigned to science against the wishes of the dead poor.24 Death repeatedly plagued Mary Shelley as she made her life as a writer and editor in and around nineteenth-century London. Her mother, feminist and antislavery author Mary Wollstonecraft, died when Shelley was only sixteen years old, leaving behind an extensive legacy that included her influential review in 1789 of Olaudah Equiano’s abolitionist narrative.25 Shelley also drew further inspiration from the contemporary exploits of Giovanni Aldini, who called himself a Galvinist after his uncle, the late physicist Luigi Galvini. In 1803, Aldini used primitive batteries to run voltaic current through the deceased body of George Foster, a prisoner executed only an hour before. Aldini’s ethically dubious experiment, performed in front of a gathering of physicians and curious others at the Royal College of Surgeons in London, appeared to make Foster’s body come back to life. As the current raced



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through Foster, it caused his body to temporarily animate: his eyes twitched and opened, his palms constricted into fists, and his legs kicked. But Foster remained dead. Still, his limited reanimation carved out a strong profile for Galvinists, and inspired numerous subsequent (and potentially unethical) experiments by other male physician scientists.26 It is therefore fascinating how Mary Shelley’s novel positions male physicians as unreliable witnesses, and counters their voices with women authorities. All throughout Frankenstein, letters written to “M.S.” introduce the account, producing a story within a story that Margaret Saville moderates and Mary Shelley herself creates. The novel is therefore a “body of knowledge” that requires scientific scrutiny on the part of the reader, as it narrates the assembly and reanimation of a corpse (itself an embodiment of scientific knowledge).27 Shelly devises further complexity through her description of the second creature that Dr. Victor Frankenstein agrees to create in response to the monster’s impassioned request (and threats), but then later destroys. Though the physician sets about assembling a female monster, he was never fully comfortable with the idea because it would wrench the power of creation from his hands: “. . . a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth, who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror.”28 Ultimately, Frankenstein finds an out by framing his dismemberment of the female monster as a form of revenge. But the violence with which he acts mirrors biomedicine’s broader assault on women. As he narrates, “I thought with a sensation of madness on my promise of creating another like to him, and, trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged.”29 Scholars have interpreted these aspects of Shelley’s novel as an intense meditation on how the patriarchal control of scientific knowledgeseeking encounters the female body as a threat. Literary theorist Alan Rauch contends that, “Frankenstein, as repulsed as he is by the creature he has created, is completely unable to contemplate the notion of a female embodiment of knowledge.”30 Further, Frankenstein’s dismemberment of his female creation provides an analog to Victorian representations of women’s bodies in pieces, as disseminated by the surgical profession. Contemporary instructional texts like Henry Gray’s Anatomy were, at the time, helping to make dissection intrinsic to the practice of Western biomedicine. Through these texts, the nineteenth-century surgeon (a man, by default) was empowered to author the body, with distancing language and original illustrations as tools of scientific objectivity and masculine omniscience (see August’s analysis of racialized surgical dismemberment in chapter 8 of this volume). The legacy of these surgical texts lives on in modern textbooks and the continued domination of men in the surgical profession. Though women comprise at least

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half of the applicants to medical schools in the United States, as of 2015 only 19.2 percent of American surgeons are women.31 In this sense, Dr. Victor Frankenstein conceals the ideological violence he enacts on the female body as an act of revenge stemming from his purported concern and contrition. However, even in his dying moments, Frankenstein (like Prometheus before him) never expresses regret for having manipulated reanimation science. Rather, he is of the opinion that he was always entitled to pursue scientific achievement: When I reflected on the work I had completed, no less a one than the creation of a sensitive and rational animal, I could not rank myself with the herd of common projectors.32

Persuasively, then, Frankenstein describes himself as entitled to the scientific endeavor; he marks himself as superior through references to other people as “common projectors,” though his creation does not rank nearly that high, for it is “animal.” He dies making his declaration of male entitlement to scientific enlightenment, while the monster banishes himself to the punitive snows of the artic. Like Prometheus in the Ancient Greek myth a thousand plus years before him, Frankenstein wrenched the sparks of technology for his own advantage, and literally created a life-form. This is undoubtedly the imagery that Mary Shelley had in mind when she subtitled her novel, The Modern Prometheus. In her creative mind, the ancient myth found new life as a cautionary tale on scientific overreach, updated with the emerging technologies of the nineteenth century. Since the time of her writing, further discourses of reanimation science, as pictured in popular film, continue to relay master narratives of power through “ideas, values, identities and sequences of activity” that may not be explicitly laid bare.33 DISEMBODIED, DISFIGURED, DISABLED WOMAN AS ANIMAL: THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE Though the story of Prometheus likely originated in Mesopotamia, by around 750 to 650 BC the myth had been reinterpreted by the Greeks, who made him into a deity.34 In those days, the Greeks did not dissect human cadavers due to cultural and religious taboos, and this meant that Aristotle, Galen, and others practiced anatomy largely through the comparative study of animals, which were thought to be less sentient and rational (see, for example, the discussion by Wright in chapter 2 of this volume). With influence from the Egyptians, these taboos increasingly faded after the third century BC, but the hierarchical differences between humans and animals remained, helping



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to justify the use of the cadavers of prisoners, the poor, and vulnerable others for experimentation in Western society. This paved the way for the more advanced anatomical studies that would enable later improvements in surgical practice, and enhance knowledge of how muscles and tissues respond to electrical stimulation vis-à-vis Galvinism.35 This is how the 1962 black-and-white horror film The Brain That Wouldn’t Die opens, with a male surgeon implementing a Galvinist-type experiment on an unnamed patient declared dead in the operating room. Dr. Bill Cortner (played by Jason Evers) cuts the patient’s skullcap open to apply electrical probes to the brain, while instructing a male colleague to massage the patient’s heart. Though the procedure somehow results in the patient’s resuscitation, the supervising surgeon on the case questions Cortner’s ethics. Their exchange reveals Cortner to be hungry for the power to control life, through a discourse that affirms the dominion of people over animals. In other words, while it is acceptable to experiment on animals, and even primates—humanity’s closest relative, it is not okay to experiment on humans. Curiously however, their dialogue completely elides the fact that medical experimentation was at the time being carried out on people without their consent, from California, to Puerto Rico and Alabama. This includes the taking of Henrietta Lacks’s cervical cancer cells in 1951 to create a cell line later injected into American prisoners, Jews, and others without their knowledge.36 In addition, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (1932–1972) blatantly denied curative treatment to rural African Americans for decades in an effort to document the disease’s sequela, or unabated progression. What’s more, thousands deemed “mentally disabled” were being forcibly sterilized in hospitals and mental health institutions, adding to the numerous African American, Puerto Rican, and Native American women also surgically sterilized without their knowledge into the 1980s.37 In this sense, it would seem that people experimented upon in real life without their consent are conceived as mattering no more than the “rabbits, mice, monkeys” that the lead surgeon mentions. Lead surgeon: You don’t explore on people! Before you put a scalpel to one, an operation like this needs testing under any condition. Over, and over again. Rabbits, mice, monkeys—((wagging finger)) not people! Cortner: That man who should be dead now won’t think so. There’s more to surgery than just being a carpenter to patch up walls. Or a plumber to drain pipes. Our bodies are capable of adjusting in ways we’ve hardly dreamt of. If we can only find the key. I’m so close now, so very close. Lead surgeon: The key to what? Cortner: Complete transplantations. To be able to transplant limbs and organs, to be able to replace diseased and damaged parts of the body as easily as we

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replace eye corneas now, so that the new parts will join together as though they were born there. Lead surgeon: ((shakes head)) Can’t be done! Cortner: It can be done! With my new special compound I’ve created, I’ll do it. I know I can do it.

It would be easy to dismiss this film as a low-brow horror flick, with yet another crazy, mad scientist at its center. However, the subtexts of its narrative, across both its verbal and visual semiotics, demonstrate that at a time of widespread, forced medical experimentation on women and people of color in the United States, science-themed movies were a tool of erasure, countering public distrust in the medical establishment by featuring characters (like the lead surgeon) who vehemently object to such abuses. Set in a completely White world void of racial diversity, the film additionally mirrors the objectification of women in America. Ultimately, Dr. Cortner ends up trolling beauty pageant contestants and models in search for the “perfect” body to attach to the severed head of his fiancée, which he manages to keep “alive” in his laboratory with his “special compound.” In this, the film relays powerful symbolism affirming the covert empowerment of (White male) biomedical doctors through discourses of the supremacy of science, and regimes of beauty that show preference for heteronormative, able-bodied White women, to the exclusion of all others. As the story goes, the severed head of Dr. Cortner’s fiancée Jan (played by Virginia Leith) becomes installed in his secret laboratory after a terrible car accident that injures them both. Only able to salvage Jan’s head from the wreckage, Cortner works with his henchman Kurt to position it in a shallow dissecting tray, where its blood pools and circulates among bubbling vials, crisscrossed tubing, and electrical wiring, in a manner most certainly inspired by Galvinism. Satisfied with this laboratory setup, Dr. Cortner keenly observes, with Kurt by his side (Figure 10.1): Kurt: Her eyelids! I saw them move. It can’t be! My eyes are deceiving me! Cortner: What you see is real. What’s done is done, and what I’ve done is right. It’s the work of science.

Speaking the way he does, Dr. Cortner comes across as drunk with his own confidence. But in describing his act as “the work of science,” his words encode an additional layer of meaning. This discourse simultaneously constructs him as an indirect agent of science and human reanimation as an inevitable innovation, allowing Cortner to depersonalize his role in this horror. Rather than a dangerous physician gone rogue, Cortner is merely an



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overzealous scientific optimist who usurps his fiancée’s personhood because he loves her too much to “let” her die. However, in exerting power over Jan’s death and her principal body part—her head, Cortner becomes a quintessential enforcer of heteronormative patriarchy, for he plans not to continue his relationship solely with her head. Instead, he wants a body for her too, and it must be beautiful and sexually appetizing. As the film continues, Cortner’s search leads him to troll a string of slim blondes, and a beauty pageant seeking to name Miss Body Beautiful (where he gets his “side course in anatomy” and a chance “to look for some bodies”). However, he becomes most intrigued by the prospect of Doris (played by Adele Lamont), a lone model who, by some estimates, has “the nicest body I’ve ever seen.” Cortner mentally rehearses this description of Doris, lustfully biting his lip repeatedly, as he sleazily visions her model physique. Next, Cortner makes his way out to Doris’s home and studio. Inside, she poses for several photographers in her bikini and high heels, and Cortner slips into the room, unannounced and uninvited (Figure 10.2). As the modeling session concludes, he endears himself to her with seductive promises to cure the facial scar she hides with her shoulder-length mane. Referring to her scar, she says, “Doesn’t it make you sick?” Doris’s words and actions cast her facial scar as a dehumanizing injury to her feminine attractiveness (interestingly, the scar has resulted from a previous sexual assault). Cortner cleverly preys upon her insecurities. Cortner: To me you’re not ugly. I see only beauty in you. You have a lovely body and a . . . face that can be made beautiful again also. Doris: Yeah, I’ve heard that song before. Cortner: I’m a doctor. I know. My father’s one of the leading plastic surgeons. If anyone can help you, we can. I know I can! Doris: I’ve been to doctors. It’s no use. The scar tissue’s too deep. No one can help me. Cortner: Yeah, that was a few years ago. Today, nothing’s hopeless.

In the character of Doris, the film provides Cortner with yet another opportunity to revive his persuasive overtures of biomedical cure and scientific innovation. In his view, the future of biomedicine is now, and anything imperfect can be fixed and “made beautiful again,” meaning he can make her into a future woman, a perfect woman. Their exchange signals that Western beauty must chase perfectionism, and that a woman can be further objectified through a focus on parts of her body rather than her full embodiment. It is a form of ideological dismemberment.

Figure 10.1.  Kurt (left) and Dr. Bill Cortner (right) watch as Jan’s head reanimates. Screenshot from The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962).

Figure 10.2.  Dr. Bill Cortner arrives to Doris’s modeling session, and sits down on the couch. (a) Before Cortner arrives. (b) After Cortner arrives, he sits in the background. Screenshots from The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962).



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Knowing this to some degree, Doris has remained unnerved about her appearance, even as she has found success as a model. She and Cortner’s conversation continues, with a subtext of dark humor: Doris: I’ll do anything that’ll help me get rid of this face! Cortner: Well, that’s where I come in.

As the film moves towards its conclusion, Cortner succeeds in luring Doris back to his laboratory, where they kiss, and he drugs her and places her on his operating table in preparation for his final horrific surgery. The sequence of activity is essentially a depiction of date rape. The rogue physician is unaware, however, that Jan has been vocalizing her disgust in his absence. Psychic abilities endowed through her reanimation have made her aware of his intent “to kill somebody, and rob them of their body,” and she has teamed up with Cortner’s earlier test subject to stop him—one she refers to as “the monster,” a pieced-together creature who, like Frankenstein’s monster, escapes from his laboratory confines. First, Jan and the monster precipitate Kurt’s demise, with their juxtaposition, communication, and collaboration, from one monster to another, amplifying Jan’s transformation into a nonhuman animal. Cortner is shocked by their monstrous collaboration, but remains undeterred, instead doubling down on his view that women with conscious minds are ontologically incomplete without possession of a desirable body: Cortner: I told you I’d bring you a body, a beautiful one. And soon it will be yours . . . I want you as a complete woman, not part of one. [. . .] When she [Doris] does come to, it’ll be your head consciously awakening for her.

In the end, Cortner is taken down by the creature at Jan’s urging, and their struggle overturns chemicals and a Bunsen burner, sparking flames. Though Cortner, as Modern Prometheus, dies fairly slowly, he makes no moves to repent for his multiple misdeeds. The monster then rescues Doris, leaving Jan to cackle hauntingly, “I told you, you should’ve let me die!” While these final moments of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die show Jan acting against Cortner’s injustice in a way that Frankenstein’s monster wasn’t allowed, it still leaves audiences with the impression she would have been better off dead. Before her car accident, Jan was the nurse assisting Cortner and his father in the hospital. Afterwards, however, her disembodiment (like Doris’s disfigurement) effected a state of disability, which constructed her as less than a woman, and more akin to a nonhuman animal that can be experimented upon without its consent. Regarding discourses on human, nonhuman, and inhuman distinctions, linguist Mel Y. Chen finds objectification and dehumanization

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to “exist within overlapping spheres of meaning,” where “dehumanization involves the more active making of an object.”38 This is what Jan’s fiancée has done to her; by robbing her of her death and reanimating her in his laboratory, Cortner has transformed her into a sexual object of his own making, using science as his covert justification. Cortner’s laboratory is effectively a site for the making of able humans into disabled, nonhuman animals and monsters. Jan’s diminished capacity amplifies Cortner’s human capacity. This disabling of Jan and the notion that she would be “better off dead,” as Chen might observe, signals discourses that base a woman’s worth on her status as able-bodied, and often heterosexually compliant, dismissing other female bodies as unacceptably disabled, or deserving of euthanasia.39 WOMAN, INTERRUPTED: AN ENGINEER COMMITS FEMICIDE IN PASSENGERS Reanimation science manifests in Passengers (2016) as a meditation on the nature of future space travel, during a journey that continues past an actual named star, Arcturus, which is located 36.66 light-years away from Earth. Comprehending such immense distance is challenging, but consider that Alpha Centauri, the star nearest to Earth, is already a distance of 4.3 lightyears,40 or 25 trillion miles away, which is about 300,000 times the distance between Earth and the sun. Our fastest known spacecraft would need about 78,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri, and maybe as many as 664,995 years to reach Arcturus.41 Needless to say, outer space is so expansive (and ever-expanding) that long-distance space travel remains science fiction. Current thinking is that if we are to survive journeys longer than the average human lifetime, passengers will need a type of medicalized freezing or stasis to suspend all aging or progression of disease—even with a spacecraft traveling close to the speed of light. Although this suspension of life, known as “suspended animation,” is yet to be devised as a longevity technology, it has long been figured into outer space science fiction with descriptors such as “cryostasis” or “cryosleep” or “stasis pod” or “hypersleep.” Each of these imagined technologies build upon existing cryogenic technologies already used for the freezing and thawing of human, animal, and plant embryos.42 To be awakened from this suspension can be interpreted as a form of reanimation. Passengers centers upon this very kind of reanimation, exploring what happens when a spacefarer is awakened with eighty-nine years remaining before reaching his new planetary home. Faced with the enormity of his unplanned isolation on a spacecraft sized to house thousands of others, he



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uses his engineering background to interrupt another passenger’s suspension, thereby reanimating her against her will. The film opens with a panorama of the vast cosmos, and a transporter hurtling forward through a loose asteroid belt, rotating in maintenance of its internal gravity. The ship’s interior appears empty, save for the thousands of people laying silently in individual “hibernation pods.” In this way, future space travel is portrayed in the film as a largely unconscious journey for the 5,000 passengers and 258 crew aboard the starship Avalon. All is well, until the luxury “starliner” encounters a massive asteroid that overwhelms its selfrepair mechanisms and disrupts its fuel reactor. This catastrophic damage causes the hibernation pod holding Jim Preston (played by Chris Pratt) in suspension to malfunction, and the thirty-something White male is suddenly awakened as the machine begins its automated reanimation protocol: medical injections followed by an electric shock to stimulate his system. Next, Jim is greeted by a 3D hologram in the likeness of an ambiguously Brown female flight attendant, who reassures him with her rehearsed speech, “It’s perfectly normal to feel confused. You just spent 120 years in suspended animation.” While checking his vitals, the computerized avatar continues, “We have nearly completed the journey from Earth to your new home, the colony world of Homestead II. A new world, a fresh start. Room to grow.” After recovering and rehydrating, Jim attends a seminar on “colonial living,” where a hologram of yet another, ambiguously mixed-raced female flight attendant begins by remarking, “Earth is the cradle of civilization, but for many, it is overpriced, overpopulated, overrated.” By omitting any mention of “human” in its description of civilization, the hologram’s speech supports a reality within the film, wherein humans are by default the only species of consequence; humans are superior life-forms entitled to select new planets to make over in their own image. Without explicitly stating it, the hologram relays discourses currently circulating throughout popular culture (on Earth) that present space colonization as a solution or “technofix,” as theorist Donna Haraway might put it, for a select few to escape the increasing pollution and social inequality caused by the warmongering and environmental degradation we are now experiencing.43 As a capitalist enterprise, the Homestead Corporation facilitates this migration and colonization effort by discounting travel fares for humans deemed especially desirable for the new colony. For example, we eventually learn this is how Jim has been able to afford the journey—his skills as a mechanical engineer have earned him a ticket, but only in exchange for giving the corporation a percentage of his lifetime pay on the new planet. This pending work responsibility brings Jim to the seminar room for orientation, where he realizes he is utterly and completely alone; the persistent absence of any other

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passengers becomes proof that he is the only one to have been awakened, and that there is no way to return to his former state of “hibernation.” As Passengers further unfolds, it reveals a posthuman, post-Earth future (the year is never specified) that is both highly gendered and corporatized. When Jim races around the ship in frantic search of someone to talk to, someone who can answer his questions and reverse his reanimation, he encounters disembodied feminine voices in the computers and programs that can be queried with requests for service or commanded with instructions. It is by way of responses from masculine voices, however, emanating from androids and other computers, that he finds out new information, including the number of years he has left in his interstellar journey. Interactions with these predestined, gendered machines craft the linguistic landscape of outer space; maleness is predictably rational, reasoned, and positioned for scientific inquiry, while femaleness is situated as nurturing and obedient. The linguistic landscape is further compounded by a class dimension that manifests as a scheme of costs, ranks, and privileges aboard the starship. Jim’s relative class status prevents him from accessing premium coffee and breakfasts, and his long-distance video call to customer service receives a response that dials up the irony with its feminine computer voice: “Message will arrive in nineteen years, with earliest reply in fifty-six years. We apologize for the delay. That will be $6,012.” Needless to say, the mechanical engineer from Denver, Colorado, is despondent, and becomes increasingly overwhelmed by the absence of human contact. For more than a year, his growing facial hair registers the enormous solitude and growing madness of his hopeless situation. Suicide begins to look attractive until he stumbles across the hibernation pod of Aurora Lane (played by Jennifer Lawrence), whom he views in repose through her pod’s transparent exterior. This marks a turning point for Jim, and he becomes obsessed with Aurora, learning more about her career as a New York–based writer by reading her publications and video interviews stored in the ship’s systems. He studies the ship’s manuals in an attempt to engineer a way of interrupting her hibernation, actions he knows will be irreversible should he succeed. Yet, he divulges his thoughts aloud with the male android bartender. Jim: You know, I’m not saying the universe is evil, but it sure has a nasty sense of humor. You get to fly to another planet, but you’ll die along the way. And you find the perfect woman, right in front of you. Yet she’s completely out of reach. [. . .] I’d be stranding her on this ship for the rest of her life.

Though Jim’s obsession has graduated from infatuation to stalking, coupled with a sense of growing entitlement to Aurora’s companionship and beauty, his words strike a tone of romance, as if he stands to miss out on the one great



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love of his life. This is a one-way romance, however, as being unconscious, Aurora is unable to share his feelings. Still, Jim feels himself justified as he takes Zeus’s fire into his own hands, so to speak, and assumes the role of Prometheus and Mad Scientist in sabotaging Aurora’s hibernation pod—he shorts the wiring, causing sparks to emanate. When the pod yields to his intervention and shocks her back to life, she begins to breathe more deeply, waking to a facsimile of the speech Jim received upon his own reanimation: “It’s perfectly normal to feel confused . . .” In order to maintain the secrecy of his experimentation, Jim ducks out of view as Aurora comes into consciousness, ultimately allowing her to believe that, like his, her reanimation was a random result of the ship’s malfunctioning. Curiously however, Aurora’s restoration to life bears striking resemblance to yet another influential ancient myth of the Western classical tradition—that of Pygmalion and his beloved Galatea, as described by the Ancient Roman poet Ovid (43 BC–18 AD) in his narrative poem Metamorphoses. Embracing the inanimate marble he has carved into an embodiment of his feminine ideal, Pygmalion showers it in gifts, marrying it, and even sleeping with it. He prays to Aphrodite (Venus), the goddess of love, beauty, sexual pleasure, and procreation, and his wish is granted by a sign of fire and flame:                             Give me the likeness of my iv’ry maid.                             The golden Goddess, present at the pray’r,                             Well knew he meant th’ inanimated fair,                             And gave the sign of granting his desire;                             For thrice in cheerful flames ascends the fire.44

Emboldened, Pygmalion then kisses his “ivory maid,” and the statue animates and responds to his nonconsensual overture.45 By Pygmalion’s hands, Galatea has been shaped as an object of his desire, and there is no room in the mythos for her to reject her role as his fantasy-come-to-life. Aurora has been similarly constructed within the narrative of Passengers, through a visual and linguistic discourse that carves her into the “perfect woman” across repeated descriptions of her beauty and virtue as a blondehaired White woman, and promise as a mate. This flattens her embodiment, so much so, that she becomes a zombie—a hollow analog of the ship’s servile flight attendants. Moreover, the very reason of Aurora’s46 reanimation and existence (in the film’s plot) is circumscribed by her predetermined role as Jim’s heteronormative complement, though differently from Pygmalion’s object, Aurora is allowed to display anger toward her “creator.” She yells at Jim, “I don’t care! I don’t care why you woke me up! You took my life!” Her words display a vulnerability that constructs her in structural opposition to Jim. He has “given” her life by taking it, and his silence has perpetuated the

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allusion that she ever had a choice in their romance. She has been powerless from the very start. Her displeasure with Jim continues until she must collaborate with him (and a lone crew member randomly awoken from hibernation) in order to stop further catastrophic malfunctions on the ship. When Jim makes a necessary spacewalk to combat these mechanical failures, the risk leads to his death. But Aurora is unwilling to accept him as dead, and drags and lifts his unconscious body toward the ship’s infirmary and into its one automated robotic health care machine, or medical pod, called “AutoDoc.” “Jim, come back to me,” she urges, expressing renewed love for the man she previously regarded as her murderer, “I can’t live on the ship without you.” The AutoDoc communicates in a masculine voice as it assesses Jim’s injuries with lightning speed, determining them to be all but permanently fatal without immediate medical attention. Aurora frantically taps the touchscreen but is told the crucial postmortem procedures will require additional medical supervision. Remembering that she has in her possession the deck chief’s identification bracelet, she scans this into the computer and utters his authorization code, and this sets the medical robots to working. As Jim sputters back to life, reanimated yet again, the scene intensely depicts female subordination to male scientific know-how, as with even the most sophisticated medical equipment at her fingertips, Aurora needs male assistance to save (animate) a life. Passengers ends with allusions to Jim and Aurora’s continued courtship and their eventual deaths aboard the Avalon. Aurora speaks exaltingly in a voiceover, describing how the two of them lived as they chose to live. Her words reflect her predetermined destiny as the object of her captor’s desire; it is a creepy kind of Stockholm syndrome and sci-fi femicide (killing of a woman by a man) that she was never designed to escape. The discursive impact of the movie, from its references to overpopulation on Earth, to its centering of two White spacefarers, and mention of the actual star Arcturus, marks a communication strategy intent on conveying a somewhat plausible future, perhaps made more convincing through its subjugation of the one woman it includes. BECOMING MOTHER TO DORMANT ALIEN LIFE IN PROMETHEUS (2012) Human, android, and alien cross paths in the 2012 film Prometheus, the highly anticipated first prequel and fifth film of the beloved Alien science fiction horror franchise (1979–2017). Differently from Alien, which famously starred actress Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley, the sole survivor of an

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unexplainably horrific alien attack on her crew of terraformers, its prequel Prometheus forays into the origins of this extraterrestrial predator, in an exploration of reproductive power and multispecies cohabitation. In the film, a mostly White crew of seventeen journey from Earth into deep space, preserved in cryostasis for a period of about two years, as their spaceship Prometheus covers a distance of 203 trillion miles. Their destination is the moon of an undisclosed planet, and as they near it, the ship’s computer calls out a repeating alert in a masculine voice: “Attention, destination threshold.” The crew is then awakened by android crew member David (played by Michael Fassbender) in the year 2093, and encouraged to drink fluids and rehydrate themselves. Speaking in a steady, masculine monotone, David reassures a coughing, vomiting scientist among them, “Your mind and body are in a state of shock, as a result of the stasis. Alright. Perfectly normal.” Reanimation science is therefore implicated early on in Prometheus through the “stasis” pods the crew emerge from, which have enabled them to traverse outer space in continuous health. The description of stasis as “perfectly normal” contextualizes this futuristic biotechnology as well-known, signaling that it is both typical of the time period and space travel setting. However, the majority of Prometheus takes place not on the spaceship, as it does in Passengers, but on the moon’s surface. Before the crew of scientists and technicians lands, their encounter with the exoplanetary moon is constructed through worlding language marked by a visual sequence of stark, barren landscapes (captured during filming in Iceland), and words curated to analogize with earthlike features. The ship’s captain, Janek, the only Black crew member, addresses copilots Chance and Ravel (the only Asian crew member), who analyzes the moon’s surface atmosphere, and they are joined by two others, Holloway and Ford (both White): Janek: What is the atmosphere? Chance: The atmosphere is 71 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, traces of argon gas. ((visible lightning strike from beyond the ship)) Janek: Whoa, now that’s weather! Holloway: Just like home! Ford: Only if you’re breathing through an exhaust pipe. CO2 [carbon dioxide] is over 3 percent. Two minutes without a suit, you’re dead.

This sequence of interaction encourages audiences to feel as though they join the crew in encountering the moon world for the first time. Details unfolding through the dialogue’s assortment of relatable but authoritative voices

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inform, and transform the unnamed alien surface into a place familiar for its similarities and contrasts with “home,” a metaphor for Earth. This discourse is consistent with what theorist Lessl has explored of the language of actual astronomers, astrobiologists, and other planetary scientists, who excite amateur publics with a “sense of coaction, a salient awareness of participation and thus of responsibility to science,” even as their activity can only be performed by a specialized few.47 Once landed on the moon’s surface, principal scientists Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Dr. Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) disclose to the crew that the Prometheus has journeyed to this star system because of their archaeological findings on Earth. The star system was depicted in devotional paintings and stelae of multiple ancient Earth civilizations, including Egypt and Mesopotamia, with the earliest dated finding as old as 35,000 years. Shaw and Holloway’s presentation has been announced by Marilyn Vickers, the mission’s manager and corporate envoy, who earlier instructed David to initiate a 3D hologram flashing the corporate logo (with masculine voiceover) in posthumous tribute to Peter Weyland, namesake and progenitor of Weyland Corporation. “WEYLAND CORPORATION. BUILDING BETTER WORLDS.” Though Shaw’s sense of scientific wonder contrasts with the Weyland Corporation’s unapologetic profiteering, it is clear that her and Holloway’s mission has been funded with revenues made from the corporation’s ventures in space colonization. The visibly excited Shaw continues to speak with the crew, including the geologist Fifield, and refers to humans’ ancient paintings of the star system as the “invitation” that has incited this cosmic adventure. Shaw: Not a map, an invitation. Fifield (geologist): From who? Shaw: We call them “Engineers.” Fifield: “Engineers”? You mind telling us what they engineered? Shaw: They engineered us.

This discourse sets up a frame through which the remainder of the film’s complex story line can be interpreted. Future humans who have engineered their ideal servant and caretaker in the humanoid android David have come in search of those who originally engineered them. While on the moon’s

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surface, they encounter evidence of ancient nonhuman civilization, as well as hostile, sentient life. The killer life-form has arisen through mutations due to contamination from a bioweapon created by the very Engineers the humans have come in search of. The core sequence of events that exposes humans to the bioweapon begins with David, who proceeds without authorization to open a mysterious, sealed chamber the crew have located inside a massive 2,000-year-old pyramidesque structure on the moon’s surface. David: I’m attempting to open the door. Shaw: Wait. We don’t know what’s on the other side. ((door to chamber opens)) David: ((smirks)) Oops. Sorry.

David’s hasty entry into the chamber ahead of his human counterparts patterns with the “forethought” ascribed to Prometheus in the ancient myth the film derives its name from. However, David’s smirk is not the first indication that his artificial intelligence has developed human-like proclivities for vanity, secretiveness, and dominance: while everyone was previously in cryostasis, he dyed his hair blonde, and established a “neurolink” with Dr. Shaw’s comatose body, enabling his voyeuristic observation of her dreamstate. Inside the pyramid structure, David unlocks the chamber by tracing his fingers along carved symbols resembling cuneiform; his ability to decipher this writing system presumably comes from earlier intensive study of ProtoIndo-European during the journey from Earth. Where the film makes the nonhuman language of the Engineers decipherable through the vocabulary and grammar of a linguistically reconstructed ancestor to human languages like Ancient Greek, Latin, and modern English, rather than in concert with even older Proto-Afroasiatic, for example, it constructs a discourse that features Proto-Indo-European as a stand-in, or symbol, of humanity. This symbolism forms a kind of subtle and covert synecdoche (part standing in for the whole) that foreshadows the physical appearance of the Engineers, whose whitish, translucent skin, monumental stature, aquiline masculine faces, and aggressive strength resemble the fabled giants or Titans of Greece (Prometheus was among these), or the legendary Colossus of Rhodes. With Proto-Indo-European symbolic of human cultural foundations in Prometheus, the Engineers reflect this alternative reality, bearing resemblance to the Europeans with whom they are to have most closely interacted—the cave dwellers on the Isle of Skye (Scotland) who peopled the site where Shaw and colleagues located their oldest archaeological evidence. This origin myth would

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easily connect with the Curse of Ham and other biblical stories interpreted as allegories of the inherent inferiority of Blacks, who, like all other humans, descended from Whites, but were punished with an enduring sunburn that positioned them well for enslavement under the harshest of conditions. These biblically based theories were in fact seminal to the practice of linguistics, philology, and comparative anatomy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on Earth (see, for example, chapter 4 of this volume, in which authors Mitchell and Michael discuss the comingling of Christianity and science).48 These linguistic details notwithstanding, it is inside the pyramid’s dark, stadium-sized chamber that the crew of the Prometheus encounter hundreds of carefully arranged urns spontaneously oozing an unknown black substance later understood to be the Engineers’ bioweapon. Upon the crew’s return to the spaceship, David opens an urn he has secreted away from the chamber and initiates an experiment of his own. During a conversation with Holloway, David inoculates an alcoholic beverage with a drop of the black substance and passes it to the already drunk scientist, who guzzles it down, oblivious to its potential danger. This premeditated act of stealth, again by David, further recalls the notion of “forethought” to position him as a futuristic interpretation of Prometheus. Holloway later retires to the ship’s quarters he shares with Shaw, initiating sexual intercourse with her, but not before their conversation concerns questions of reproduction, creation, and power. Their conversation comes on the heels of experimentation performed earlier by Shaw and Ford, who returned to the ship with the severed head of one of the ancient Engineers. The head was apparently severed through contact with the descending chamber door all those years ago, and preserved by being sealed within the airtight room. In the ship’s laboratory, Shaw suggested they might electrically stimulate a specific area of the brain stem (the locus coeruleus, which is found in the human brain), thereby reanimating the head. The experiment was observed by David, Vickers, and Holloway. Shaw: Can you run a stem line into the locus coeruleus? I—I think we can trick the nervous system into thinking that it’s still alive. ((smiles)) Ford: ((takes out the Synapse Reestablisher, and inserts the probe deeply behind the Engineer’s right ear)) Shaw: Thirty amps, no more.

The ensuing scene bears resemblance to Jan’s ethically questionable reanimation in The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, except that this nonhuman head never regains consciousness, and instead writhes in increasing pain. After its eyes blink open, the facial muscles twitch, giving way to grotesque contortions and a pulsating scalp. Shaw demands they lower the electrical stimula-

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tion, but it is too little, too late, and the head explodes only seconds after they contain it behind glass in the lab. David’s immediate response is one of blunt, unemotional fascination with the nature of the Engineer’s re-death; his demeanor is creepy and sociopathic. David: ((expressionless)) Mortal after all. Shaw: Take a sample. Let’s have a look.

Though shocked, Shaw decides they should still run tests on the head’s genetic material, and it is these lab results she shares with Holloway when he returns to their quarters that evening after his interaction with David. Shaw: Their genetic material predates ours; we come from them. Holloway: Guess you can take your father’s [Christian] cross off now. Shaw: Why would I want to do that? Holloway: Because they made us. ((gestures to data of matching DNA samples she has shared with him)) Shaw: And who made them? Holloway: ((laughs a bit)) Well, exactly. We’ll never know. But here’s what we do know. Is that there is nothing special about the creation of life. I mean, anybody can do it. All you need is a dash of DNA and half a brain, right? Shaw: ((teary-eyed)) I can’t. ((shakes head)) I can’t create life. What . . . does that say about me?

In this scene, Shaw’s interaction with Holloway frames her infertility as a disability that detracts from her White womanhood. Beginning with imagery of the masculine Engineers as progenitors of humans, the revelation of Shaw’s infertility effectively lowers her status, because as Holloway says, there’s “nothing special” about being a woman, because “anybody can do it”—a reference to a man acting independently. But after Shaw reveals her insecurity, Holloway somewhat backs off his rhetoric to assuage her concerns and in so doing, enters into sexual relations with her. Their intimate activity unwittingly instigates the next stage of David’s experiment, and little more than ten hours later, Holloway dies a horrifically painful death from the alien infection. Deeply distressed by his demise, Shaw passes out, and later wakes in the ship’s med bay to David informing her that she appears to be three months pregnant with what is “not exactly a traditional fetus.” The news leaves Shaw stunned, bewildered, and scared, but David is unaffected. She asks to see the medical scan of the fetus and expresses a desire to terminate the pregnancy, but her concerns are dismissed by him. Instead, he

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explains his plan to have her put back into cryostasis, where she will remain in suspended animation, thus preserving both her and the fetus for the duration of his experimentation and the ship’s return journey. Shaw: David, I want to see it. ((gets up from the examination table)) David: Now, Doctor . . . Shaw: I want to see it. ((frantically tries to cue up the medical computer screen)) I want to know if we— David: —I’m afraid we don’t have the personnel to perform a procedure like that. Our best option— Shaw: I want it out. David: —Is to put you back in cryostasis, until we return to Earth. Shaw: Please. ((clutching at David in desperation)) Get it out of me. Get it out of me! Please! ((begins to cry out with abdominal pain, and collapses to the floor))

There is a lot about this turn of events that is strategically designed to reduce Shaw to an indigent, powerless state of being through a shifting of the animacies of her body, including the dramatic denial of an abortion to her by a White masculine android. For one, David’s intention to put her back into cryostasis will render her comatose and therefore inanimate. Secondly, through his experimentation she has unknowingly become a gestational surrogate, conceiving a fetus to which she cannot have possibly contributed genetic material as an infertile woman. This discourse recalls Aristotle’s actual theories of female passivity in reproduction, which beheld male semen as the only active agent in the creation of life. Such theories survived into sixteenthand seventeenth-century Europe, as feminist historian Carolyn Merchant has attested, with “man as parent and the woman as incubator.”49 Having been thus transformed into an incubator, through the resurrection, or reanimation, of these old discourses as part of her character’s narrative, Shaw is further reduced through her implied consanguinity with the alien fetus developing within her, much as might a parasitic tapeworm. This comingling of her blood with that of the alien animal insinuates a contamination of her femininity through copulation with the alien DNA. In this way, her earlier sexual intercourse becomes somewhat symbolic of the deviant act of bestiality, albeit with a human man infected with alien DNA, suggesting an animality about her that is neither appropriate to the “civilized” human condition, nor her previous status as a learned scientist. Not only is Shaw an experimental test subject, but she is also a sexual deviant. This effects a combination of objectification and dehumanization that



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nullifies her identity as a scientist, and marks a turning point in how David addresses her for the remainder of the film. Poignantly, David no longer addresses her as “Doctor” or “Dr. Shaw” after these moments in the med bay. Thereafter, he refers to her by first name only; having lost her preeminent status, she is accordingly called “Elizabeth,” a name to which she responds without hesitation. This sly denaming accomplishes a further discursive act of dehumanization, and likely goes unnoticed by audiences because the moniker is her name and not an abrasive epithet or flamboyant misnaming of the sort that the teacher character in the popular Key & Peele comedic skit performs, transforming students’ Western names like Denise and Aaron into “Dee-nice” or “Eh-eh-rawn.”50 The manipulation of Shaw’s naming bears loose resemblance to the type of ethnoracial subordination sociocultural linguist Mary Bucholtz observes in American classrooms, where some teachers repeatedly anglicize and alter the pronunciation of their Latinx students’ names as a way of intentionally disempowering and marginalizing these students.51 Later, when Shaw successfully fights off the attempt to reinstall her body in cryostasis, and stumbles with increasing pain to the automated robotic health care machine located in Vickers’s living quarters, she faces yet another revelation of her superfluous status as a woman. The Pauling MedPod responds to her inquiry in its feminine monotone: MedPod: Emergency procedures initiated. Verbally state the nature of your injury. Shaw: ((gasping)) I—need—Cesarean. MedPod: Error. This MedPod is calibrated for male patients only. It does not stock the procedure you have requested. Please seek critical assistance elsewh—

Faced with the machine’s hostile, sexist configuration, Shaw begins to input manual commands on its touchscreen map of the male anatomical body in an effort to save her own life. Shaw: ((tapping touchscreen)) Abdominal. Penetrating injuries. Foreign body. Initiate. MedPod: Surgical procedure to begin.

As the MedPod’s surgical lasers and tooled arms remove from Shaw’s abdomen a large squid-like creature with writhing tentacles, its lingering umbilical cord and dripping blood visibilize her consanguinity with this alien life-form that has taken her body as its host. This completes the film’s extended metaphor of reanimation, where the science, through its manifestations in male-controlled cryostasis and sexual reproduction, has enabled both the colonization of deep space and the awakening of dormant alien life. The film concludes by revealing

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that the mission’s 103-year-old corporate benefactor is not dead as was previously claimed. Still alive, and on the spaceship, Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) has sponsored the scientific expedition hoping that the Engineers might provide the key to human immortality, thereby allowing him to run the Weyland Corporation indefinitely, and keep it out of the hands of his logical successor, his daughter Marilyn Vickers. In this sense, the corporation’s own profile as a pioneer of biotech and space exploration research becomes a “body of scientific knowledge” that, like Victor Frankenstein, Peter Weyland is unwilling to cede to a female embodiment. In the end, everyone is dead except for Shaw (and a disembodied David, who is immortal), for the alien she has birthed proceeded to grow exponentially and attack what remained of the Prometheus. Though there were multiple clues to David’s treachery, the film ends with her never suspecting him as the cause of her misery. “My name is Elizabeth Shaw,” her voiceover sounds in a final demotion of her scientific prowess, “last survivor of the Prometheus. And I am still searching.” CONCLUSION: A SPECULATIVE OUTLOOK ON FEMALE FUTURES This chapter has examined the futurisms presented in modern science fiction film, with attention to reanimation science, language, and the female body as sites of unequal power relations. Building upon a review of key themes in the original Frankenstein novel, I have explored how films The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, Passengers, and Prometheus develop individual, Eurocentric sci-fi mythologies that rely heavily on Greco-Roman myth and ideologies of White male supremacy. The Ancient Greek myth of Prometheus is the backbone of these films, along with the archetypal male mad scientist who performs his tasks with a veil of secrecy, aiming to author a pathway to the awakening of life. Not only must the male scientist and engineer remain in control of scientific knowledge as embodied by the female form, but he must be seen to be righteous in doing it. With righteousness as his reward, the Modern Prometheus, as mortal man, is allowed to die confidently secure in his own scientific achievement—or never dies, because he was a nonhuman (android) to begin with. This rescue and celebration of the mad scientist’s male dignity is a core discourse of the reanimation science fiction subgenre.52 The futuristic allure of reanimation science, with its visioning of the female body and the cosmos in ways that attempt to presage technological development, demands critical examination of these sexist undertones, for science fiction film remains a powerful catalyst of public discourse and imagination. The covert ways these modern films use



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language to imagine the dehumanization and objectification of their central female characters may therefore be shocking, given that women have become increasingly more visible in recent decades as self-determined college graduates, scientists, engineers, surgeons, astronauts, senators, Supreme Court Justices, and others. The seductive discourse of these films nevertheless provides evidence that the ancient arc of Western male domination lives on, and is constructing its longevity through projections into popular futurisms concerning reproductive immortality, that undermine and alienate women, while excluding people of color—notably, women of color. The gendered and racialized outlooks on women and people of color that proliferate in science fiction film are mirrored in other aspects of the public sphere. Famously, Dr. Mae Jemison has reflected that her path as an undergraduate engineering major was challenged by professors who would “just pretend I wasn’t there,” but were apt to respond positively if a White male student asked her same question.53 Unfortunately, countless women students and others continue to experience discrimination through exclusion, criminalization of access to contraception and abortion, gendered and sex-based differences in pay, and sexual assault in ways that #MeToo and other contemporary social movements aim to expose and redress. A recent issue of Science magazine features an essay by tenured psychology professor and mother of three Sharon Ramos Goyette, who describes how a university administrator encouraged her to leave her job, saying “It’s time to be home with your children.”54 These are issues that longtime feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, has continued to relate to women’s control of their reproductive capabilities and workplace protections, all of which concern equality under the law. As one of Ginsburg’s apprentices has summed of her legal philosophy: “Practices that constrain women’s liberty deny women equality.”55 Within this view, it is apparent that the films examined in this chapter represent an effort to impose traditional sex roles on women in ways that intentionally obscure other possibilities. In addition, fresh verbal attacks by U.S. President Trump, who himself has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least twelve women, also serve to undermine women through a comingling of discourses of popular science and racialized difference. Speaking at a 2018 political rally in Montana, Trump used his presidency as a bully pulpit to deride Senator Elizabeth Warren, calling her “fake Pocahontas” and challenging her to perform genetic testing to verify her Native American heritage: We’re in the #MeToo generation, so I have to be very gentle. And we will very gently take that [DNA testing] kit and we will slowly toss it, hoping it doesn’t hit her and injure her arm, even though it only weighs probably two ounces.56

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Senator Warren subsequently responded via Twitter, making mention of how the Trump administration was currently having to resort to genetic testing in order to comply with court orders to reunite children, largely of Latin American descent, with their long-detained, immigrant parents. These detainees were recent arrivals to the United States, some of whom Trump had earlier loosely referred to as “animals”57: Hey, @realDonaldTrump: While you obsess over my genes, your Admin (sic) is conducting DNA tests on little kids because you ripped them from their mamas & you are too incompetent to reunite them in time to meet a court order. Maybe you should focus on fixing the lives you’re destroying.

Just as the science fiction narratives discussed in this chapter can be understood as more than simple cult classics, the trading of these political barbs implicates more than innocuous banter. Rather, this public discourse demonstrates that women’s bodies remain a centerpiece of patriarchal power, with “science” as an excuse or justification for regulating female embodiments through sexual assault, scientific experimentation, forced procreation, and name-calling. And when it comes to the persistent imagining of patriarchal power in the speculative future, we must ask why, as theorist Judith Butler has underscored, this power insists on a fixity of sex, gender, and related social roles, in ways that ontologically and linguistically conspire to “preempt the possibilities of imaginable and realizable gender configurations within culture.”58 At a time when Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and the Republican Party are also making headlines for ordering the Pentagon to organize a so-called militaristic “Space Force,”59 we must be vigilant that the type of outer space fictions we entertain ourselves with are not normalizing a future that endangers our present. This includes, as science and technology studies scholars Andrew Russell and Lee Vinsel have warned, the seemingly prophetic thrust of entrepreneur Elon Musk’s efforts towards human settlement on Mars, which are a “distraction from the severe problems facing human societies” here on Earth.60 It is in this sense that Russell and Vinsel reference in their essay the 1970 social justice anthem “Whitey on the Moon” as authored by poet Gil Scott-Heron, to amplify how decades ago, African American activists were already stressing how repurposing the public funds used to send White men (critically termed “Whitey”) into space could help alleviate the crippling inequality plaguing the United States:                                  I can’t pay no doctor bills.                                  (But Whitey’s on the moon)                                  Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still.                                  (While Whitey’s on the moon)61



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Bearing this in mind, it remains increasingly important for us to work toward “visionary fiction,”62 as poet Walidah Imarisha has remarked of legendary science fiction author Octavia Butler’s stellar imaginings. In my view, this entails going beyond metaphors derived from the Eurocentric mythologies that have propped up Western societies since the times of Ancient Greece. In her introduction to the anthology Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, Imarisha defines visionary fiction as a descriptor of “science fiction that has relevance toward building new, freer worlds [. . .] with the arc always bending towards justice.”63 In a related way, this has been my goal here in this chapter, to identify how some of our newest science fiction narratives disappoint in their reconfiguration of Prometheus into a kind of Brometheus. The key to a visionary future undoubtedly lies in crafting new voices in the minds of more diverse storytellers and bold science fiction practitioners, who will imagine prospects beyond our wildest dreams. No need to wait until the year 2233 for Lt. Uhura and colleagues to come on the scene. NOTES 1.  FoundationINTERVIEWS, “Nichelle Nichols on how Dr. MLK, Jr. dissuaded her from quitting Star Trek,” January 7, 2013, EmmyTVLegends.org, https://www .youtube.com/watch?v=pSq_UIuxba8. Accessed July 7, 2018. 2.  Lisa Messeri, Placing Outer Space, 141. 3.  Lisa Messeri, Placing Outer Space, 145. 4.  This chapter has benefitted tremendously from the close reading of earlier drafts by generous friends, family, and colleagues. In particular, I acknowledge input from Adia Benton, who encouraged me to rethink the political entanglement of biotechnologies in speculative narratives; Debi Thomas shared her perspective as a practicing surgeon and biomedical scientist; Charissa Dechéne commented on the vulnerability of prisoner bodies; Natasha Bissonauth brought to my attention the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea; and thanks to Ute Bettray for our meaningful discussion of feminist ontologies; and my thanks to Lisa Messeri for her anthropological perspective. I also thank Jack Halberstam, who encouraged me to attend a Columbia University conference on haptics and embodiment in 2017 that introduced me to many works including Chen’s Animacies. Any and all shortcomings are, of course, my own. 5.  Donna J. Haraway, Staying With the Trouble. 6.  Mumia Abu-Jamal, “Star Wars and the American Imagination.” 7.  Mumia Abu-Jamal, “Star Wars and the American Imagination,” 257. This very same notion of the colonized subject attempting fated rebellion surfaces in The Matrix film trilogy (1999–2003) in which all of humanity lives a lie of freedom imparted through virtual reality. Ultimately, audiences of the films learn that the oppressive Machines who operate the Matrix do, in fact, expect a periodic human resistance effort, and as a further mind-numbing bend of reality, have regularly allowed the

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resistance long enough to crush it, root out insurgents, and renew their psychological and physical exploitation of humanity.  8. Zeynep Yenisey, “The New ‘Doctor Who’ is a Woman, and Some of the Show’s Fans Just Can’t Handle It,” Maxim.  9. Ibid. 10.  Jon Marcus, “Why Men Are the New College Minority,” The Atlantic. 11.  Jocelyn Steinke, Marilee Long, Marne J. Johnson, and Sayani Ghosh, “Gender Stereotypes of Scientist Characters in Television Programs Popular Among Middle School–Aged Children.” 12.  Catherine Hill, Christianne Corbett, and Andresse St. Rose, “Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.” 13.  Peter Weingart, Claudia Muhl, and Petra Pansegrau, “Of Power Maniacs and Unethical Geniuses: Science and Scientists in Fiction Film.” 14.  Thomas Lessl, “The Priestly Voice.” 15.  Kurt W. Back, “Frankenstein and Brave New World: Two Cautionary Myths on the Boundaries of Science,” 281. 16.  Emily Martin, Women and the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction, p. 21. 17.  Mel Y. Chen, “Language and Mattering in Humans,” in Animacies, 42. 18.  Peter Weingart, Claudia Muhl, and Petra Pansegrau, “Of Power Maniacs and Unethical Geniuses: Science and Scientists in Fiction Film.” 19.  Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (2nd Norton Critical Edition), 160. 20.  David Machin and Andrea Mayr, How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis, 11. 21.  Mary Bucholtz, White Kids: Language, Race, and Styles of Youth Identity. 22.  Dell Hymes, Ethnography, Linguistics, Narrative Inequality. See also, Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, “All of the above: New coalitions in sociocultural linguistics.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4), 401–431. 23.  Alastair Pennycook, Critical Applied Linguistics. 24. For lively and somewhat historically accurate representation of public and legislative debate concerning the Anatomy Act of 1832, see early episodes of the television drama The Frankenstein Chronicles (2015– ). 25.  Moira Ferguson, “Mary Wollstonecraft and the Problematic of Slavery.” 26.  See, for example, the study detailed by Benjamin W. Richardson in his 1879 article in Scientific American entitled, “Suspended Animation.” 27.  Alan Rauch, “The Monstrous Body of Knowledge in Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein.’” 28.  Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (2nd Norton Critical Edition), p. 119. 29. Ibid. 30.  Emphasis in original. Alan Rauch, “The Monstrous Body of Knowledge in Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein,’” 232. 31.  Lahle Wolfe, “Statistics on the number of women surgeons in the United States.” 32.  Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (2nd Norton Critical Edition), 152. 33.  David Machin and Andrea Mayr, How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis, 11. 34.  Carl Power and John E. J. Rasko, “Whither Prometheus’ Liver? Greek Myth and the Science of Regeneration.”



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35. Ibid. 36.  Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. 37.  Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body. See also Laura Briggs, Reproducing Empire. 38.  Mel Y. Chen, “Language and Mattering in Humans,” in Animacies, 42–43. 39.  Mel Y. Chen, “Queer Animality,” in Animacies, 125. 40. A light-year is a unit of astronomical distance that describes the distance that light travels in one year, approximately six trillion miles. The speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second. 41.  Deborah Byrd, “How Long to Travel to Alpha Centauri?” 42.  For example, the futuristic sci-fi television series Dark Matter (2015–2017) explores the stories of a spaceship crew who each awake from a state of cryogenic “stasis” without memory of who they are. The seventh episode of the series (originally airing July 24, 2015, on the Syfy network), in particular, describes cryogenic freezing of the body as a routine medical treatment when an adequate cure is unavailable. In that episode, a (White) woman is awakened and removed from a biotechnology known as a “stasis pod,” only to emotionally reconnect with a crew member and explain her state of terminal, degenerative disease (as a result of exoplanet mining and pollution), before being frozen again, with the promise that a cure will be forthcoming. Unfortunately, a power outage on the ship causes the woman’s stasis pod to lose function, killing her. 43.  Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 3. These discourses are also circulating in a growing number of science fiction films focused on outer space exploration. Several people, including cultural anthropologist Lisa Messeri, have noted how the subtexts of this “colonization” terminology reproduces earlier sentiments captured within terrestrial histories of colonial expansion and exploitation of both peoples and nature as expendable resources. See, for example, Messeri’s 2015 essay on Slate.com, “We Need to Stop Talking About Space as a ‘Frontier.’” 44.  From the 1717 English translation of Ovid’s Latin verse, by Sir Samuel Garth, Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. 45.  The myth of Pygmalion and Galatea is dramatically illustrated in an oil painting (c. 1890) of the same name by artist Jean-Léon Gérôme. The painting artfully depicts the sculptor embracing his creation as she transforms from inanimate material into flesh and blood. 46.  “Aurora” also harbors further symbolism as the name of the Greco-Roman goddess of dawn, who (re)awakens daily to assist Apollo/Sol, the masculine god of sun and light. 47.  Thomas Lessl, “The Priestly Voice,” 191. 48.  There are several works that discuss the Curse of Ham and its impact on early linguistic theory and the work of European historical linguists. Among these, the study by Sara Pugach, Africa in Translation, is a phenomenal resource that outlines how German scholars influenced by these biblical interpretations worked hard to ensure that European languages were placed at the top of emerging hierarchies and histories of language, even as they encountered African and Asian languages that provided evidence to the contrary.

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49.  Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 157. 50.  Key and Peele, “Substitute Teacher,” October 17, 2012, Comedy Central. 51.  Mary Bucholtz, “On Being Called Out of One’s Name: Indexical Bleaching as a Technique of Deracialization.” 52.  The one example I have been able to find of a female scientist reanimating a man is in a season 3 episode of the 1990s science fiction television series Sliders (episode 14), in which recurring character and amateur scientist Quinn Mallory is medically drained of his blood by Dr. Deera Mubaric, who is investigating her patients’ afterlife experiences (albeit while scantily clad). However, once Quinn is revived, he refuses to cooperate with Dr. Mubaric, continuing to call her “Deera” even as she ultimately complies with his demands, gives him the keys to her car, and helps him rescue his friends. In the end, the episode’s entire story line depicts a woman repeatedly undermined by male characters venerated as default scientists, leaders, and professors. 53.  Amy Finnerty, “Outnumbered: Standing Out at Work: Dr. Mae C. Jemison,” New York Times. 54.  Sharon Ramos Goyette, “Hitting the Wall,” Science. 55.  Reva B. Siegel, “Equality and Choice: Sex Equality Perspectives on Reproductive Rights in the Work of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” 56.  Karen Tumulty, “To the President, #MeToo is Little More Than a Punchline,” The Washington Post. 57.  Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Trump Calls Some Unauthorized Immigrants ‘Animals’ in Rant,” New York Times. 58.  Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, 13. 59.  Jacqueline Klimas, “Trump Orders Creation of a Stand-Alone Space Force,” Politico. 60.  Andrew Russell and Lee Vinsel, “Whitey on Mars: Elon Musk and the Rise of Silicon Valley’s Strange Trickle-down Science,” Aeon. 61.  Gil Scott-Heron, “Whitey on the Moon.” 62.  Walidah Imarisha, “Introduction,” Octavia’s Brood, 4. 63. Ibid.

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Index

ableism, cerebral subjectivity basis of, 38–39 abonnés. See male subscribers abortion, White masculine android denying, 226–27 Abu-Jumal, Mumia, 204, 206 abuse, sexual assault and, 62–66 Academy of Natural Sciences (ANSP), 82–83, 83, 84, 85–86 activism/activist, 60, 71n6, 72n12, 86, 122, 201, 204; “Whitey on the Moon” amplifying, 230–31. See also Davis, Angela Y.; McDonald, CeCe Adinkra symbol, 3 Aethiopian race, 82–83, 83, 84 Africa in Translation (Pugach), 233n48 African-American Out Migration Task Force (2007), 124 African Americans, 156–57, 230–31; in ballet, 196n1; Congresswoman as, 179; Language, 5, 195; Starbucks condemned by, 9; Star Trek influencing, 201–2; tap influenced by, 183, 186, 194, 195, 198n19. See also Copeland, Misty African arts, European artists influencing, 196n5

African continent, skulls from, 87–90 African cultural constellation, 197n14 African dance, 187, 189, 192, 196n7 Agassiz, Louis, 86 Alabama, 86, 87, 156, 211 Aldini, Giovanni, 208–9 Alexandria, Egypt, 40, 43 Alien franchise, 220–28 alien life, 14, 203, 205, 220–28 alienate/alienation, 206, 209 “All Dark People is Light on Their Feet,” 194–95 Alpha Centauri, 216 Ambrose of Milan, 42–43, 45–46 American Ballet Theatre, 183 American Civil War, 90 American Golgotha, 82–83, 83, 84 Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical (Gray, H.), 13–14, 180n8, 209–10; anonymous acts in, 174–77; erasure and, 171–74; overview of, 167–69, 178–79; passive voice and, 171–74; pelvis speaking in, 177–78; as Victorian surgical textbook, 169–71; violence in, 174–77 Anatomy Act (1832), 208, 232n24 Anderson, Lauren, 183 animacies, 203–4, 206–7, 226–28 239

240

Index

animals, 12, 19, 22, 24, 26, 42, 44–47, 210–16, 214, 230 animation, suspended, 216–20, 226 anonymous acts, 174–77 ANSP. See Academy of Natural Sciences “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance” (Keali’inohomoku), 185–87 apes, Galen of Pergamum on, 52n32, 52n34 Aphrodite (Venus), 219–20 Apollo 11, 202 apology, for slave trade, 77, 89–90 Arcturus, 216, 220 Aristotle, 210, 226–27 Arizona, 10–11 arm movements (port de bras), 190 Arthur, Chester, 4–5 articulate speech, 45–46, 52n35 Asian Americans, 4–5, 197n12 Astaire, Fred, 197n18 attractiveness: feminine, 213, 215–16. See also female bodies, death and power cases of Auerbach, Nina, 100–101 August, Emily, 13–14 “Aurora Lane” (fictional character), 218–20, 233n46 author, of body, 173 “AutoDoc” (fictional medical device), 220 autoethnographic research, 184–85 Baartman, Sara, 81. See also Hottentot Back, Kurt W., 206 Baker, Josephine, 192 Ballerina Body (Copeland), 190–91 ballet, 196n2, 197nn12–13; African Americans in, 196n1; discrimination in, 192; feminists criticizing, 187–88 ballet and tap, butts and bodies in, 197n18; alignment of, 197n9; classification systems of, 185–87; construction of, 190–95; dance

defined in, 185–87; Dorrance and, 14, 165–66, 183–84, 187, 195–96; Garafola on, 196n8; key terms of, 185–87; methodology of, 184–85; overview of, 183–84, 195–96. See also Copeland, Misty banshee (ban sìdhe), 102, 103–5 Barbados, 85 Bare Soundz (Glover), 194 “Baron Vordenburg” (fictional character), 105–6, 112–13 Basil of Caesarea, 45–46, 52n40 Bauman, Zygmunt, 139 Bayard Rustin Civil Rights Award, 60 Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood. See San Francisco, California beautiful body, parts of, 13–14, 165–66, 210–16, 214, 224–25. See also Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical; ballet and tap, butts and bodies in Belize, 126 Berry, Alisha, 15n1 bestiality, 64, 226–28 bestialization, 64–65 Bettray, Ute, 12 bias: conscious, 87–90; implicit, 157, 168–69, 205–7; racial, 9, 77–90, 83–84, 156–57 billboard, body as, 155 Bischoff, Theodor Ludwig, 82–83 Black, Maggie, 197n9 Black Lives Matter/#BlackLivesMatter, 70, 100, 115 Black-male-ness, 9–11 black muzzles (bozales negros), 87–90, 93n60 Blackness, 59, 68, 108, 112, 194–95 Blacks, 157; body of, 197n18; children, 78–80; educational programs for, 78–80; feminism, 15n3, 62–63; intersectionality influencing, 15n3; masculinity, 127–28; neighborhoods, 122; residents, 133n5; students, 197n12; in tap dancing, 197n18; Whites influencing, 15n5, 224.



Index 241

See also African Americans; McDonald, CeCe; San Francisco, California Blasis, Carlo, 188 The Bleeding Edge, 179 blood, 35n53; bloodline, 106–15; bloodmixing, 107–12; blood-ties, 103–7, 111; miscegenation, 12, 105, 106–10, 112, 115n15. See also consanguinity Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 80, 82, 84, 91n15, 91n22 Bodies in Protest (Kroll-Smith and Floyd), 125 body/bodies: alien, 223–28; counts, 23, 31; human, 11, 24, 27–34, 43–47, 168, 170; of knowledge, 171, 209, 228. See also Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical; brain; reanimation Border Patrol, U.S., 10–11 Bourdieu, Pierre, 8–11, 188 Bouvia, Elizabeth, 143–45, 144, 158n3 Bouvia case, 143, 144, 144–45 bozales negros. See black muzzles brain: animal bodies influenced by, 44–47; brainhood, 38–40; in Christianity, 39–40, 42–43, 47–48; in comparative anatomy, 40–42; of cows, 51n30; damage, 41–42, 43, 53n54, 53n57; death of, 152–54, 157, 160n33; executive functions of, 47–48; as female, 39; God and, 43–47; Herophilus on, 51n28; humanizing of, 42–43, 47–48; Jerome on, 53n57; as male, 39; Morton, S., on, 92n35; overview of, 37–40, 47–48; of ox, 52n32; Palladius of Galatia on, 53n56; race on, 80–81; scans, 150, 151; scientific racism supported by, 39; Theodoret of Cyrrhus on, 53n54; Tiedemann on, 92n32; Vidal on, 50n20. See also female bodies, death and power cases of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, 210–16, 214, 224–25

“Braithwaite family” (fictional characters), 110, 113–14 Brennan (U.S. Supreme Court Justice), 148–50 Brennan, Teresa, 50n21 Bring in ‘da Noise/Bring in ‘da Funk (Glover), 193, 197n16 British, Ireland occupied by, 12, 75, 103, 106 “Brook” (fictional character), 108–9, 111–12, 113 Brown, Michael, 26 Brown children, educational programs for, 78–80 Browning, Christopher, 29 Brown people, San Francisco redevelopment and gentrification influencing, 123, 124–25 Brox, Ali, 108–9, 111 Bucholtz, Mary, 227 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 13, 114 Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S., 62 Bush, George H. W., 50n16 Butler, Judith, 230 Butler, Octavia, 107–8, 231. See also Fledgling buttocks/butts, 5, 14, 165.See ballet and tap, butts and bodies in Byron (Lord), 100–101 Cachuca, 188 The Caine Mutiny (Wouk), 23–24 Caldwell, Charles, 86 Calhoun, John C., 86 California, 11, 25, 120, 140–41, 143–45, 144, 152–53, 211. See also San Francisco, California Canada, 2–3, 9, 154 Canada, Iris, 123, 131 capacity for civilization, 81 carceral state, 62, 63, 67 cargo, 29–30, 31 Carmilla (Le Fanu), 12–13; Fledgling compared with, 110–11, 112–14; overview of, 99–100, 101, 102–7

242

Index

“Carmilla” (fictional character), 101, 102–7, 110–11, 112–14 Carter, Henry Vandyke, 171 Cartesian duality, 188–89, 191–92 Cartwright, Samuel A., 181n10 castle (schloss), 102–3, 104–5 Catholic Emancipation (1829), 102 cavity, of pelvis, 177–78 “Celia” (fictional character), 109–10, 111–12 CERCLA. See Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act cerebral subjectivity, 38–40 chain of being, 39, 51n26 “Chance” (fictional character), 221–22 Charles II (king), 4 “Charlie Holloway” (fictional character), 221–22, 224–25 Chen, Mel Y., 206–7, 215–16 chess game, 122–23 Chicago, Illinois, 60, 62–63, 72n10 Children’s Hospital Oakland, 152–53 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 4–5 Christianity, 12, 39–40, 42–43, 47–48, 51n27, 104, 188, 189, 224 Chrysippus, Galen of Pergamum quoting, 52n36 Chrysostom, John, 42–43, 54n63 City Hall (Philadelphia), 4 civilization, capacity for, 81 classical liberalism, 38 Cleveland, Ohio, 10–11 Cobb, Nicole Anderson, 49n10 The Code of Terpsichore (Blasis), 188 cogitatorium. See thinkery Collins, John, 86 Collins, Patricia Hill, 111, 127 colonization, 217, 222, 227, 233n43 color: men of, 71n3, 192; parents of, 157; patients of, 154; people of, 1–5, 12, 14, 71n3, 138, 139, 143, 153–54, 157, 184–96, 203–4, 212, 229–31; women of, 1–5, 12, 71n3, 138, 139, 143, 153–54, 184–96, 229–30. See

also Davis, Angela Y.; McDonald, CeCe; San Francisco, California Colorado State University, 10–11 colorblind/colorblindness, 192 color-casting, 191–92 Combe, Andrew, 92n35 Combe, George, 82, 88 comparative anatomy, 40–42, 46–47, 80, 91n22, 224 Compassion & Choices, 140–41 Compendium of Heretical Fables (Theodoret of Cyrrhus), 53n54 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), 132n1 Congresswoman, as African American, 179 consanguinity, 226–27 conscious bias, 87–90 Constantine I, 51n27 Constitution, U.S., 2 constructed image, 126 control, 140–41, 145–50, 146, 147, 149 Copeland, Misty, 14, 187; Ballerina Body by, 190–91; overview of, 165–66, 183–84, 195–96 corpse, 31–33, 172, 208–9. See also Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical; reanimation Costello, Dorisa, 12–13 Council of Judgment (Fledgling), 109, 112 “Count Dracula” (fictional character), 100–101, 113–14 counterfeit humans, 23, 28 Court of Appeal, 150–51 courts, as battleground, 141–43 cows, brains of, 51n30 Cox, Laverne, 60 Crania Aegyptiaca (Morton, S.), 88–89 Crania Americana (Morton, S.), 82–83, 83, 84, 86, 87–88, 181n10 craniology, 80–81, 82–83, 83, 84, 89, 92n28 crash carts, 141



Index 243

Creek Alabama Uprising (1836–1837), 87 Creek Nation, skulls of, 87 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 1, 15n3. See also intersectionality criminal body, rational mind vs., 11–12, 19–20 Criminal Mind, 11–12 crucifixion, of Viet Cong, 31–32 Cruzan, Nancy, 138, 148–50, 149, 155 Cruzan case, 143, 148–50, 149, 155 cryo-: sleep, 216–20; stasis, 216–20, 221, 226–27, 233n42 Cuba, 87–90 cultural distance, 23 Curse of Ham, 224, 233n48 Cuvier, Georges, 80–81 Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, 10–11 dance, 186–87; African, 189, 192, 196n7; companies, 196n3; sexual exploitation linked to, 188; tap dancing as, 192–95, 196n6, 197–98nn15–19; of U.S., 14, 189. See also ballet dancer’s body, 184 “Daniel Gordon” (fictional character), 109 Dark Matter, 233n42 dark-skinned figure, 109–12, 195–96 “Darth Vader” (fictional character), 204 Darwin, Charles, 4, 77, 90 Daston, Lorraine, 172–73, 180n2, 180n5 date rape, 215 “David” (fictional character), 221, 222, 223–27, 228 Davis, Angela Y., 12; on G4S, 72n13; on human category, 69; on intersectionality, 71n5; McDonald echoing, 63–69, 70–71; overview of, 59–62; on prison-industrial complex, 61, 65–66, 71n3 the dead, 30, 46–47, 51n30, 90, 114, 208–9; in The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, 211–16, 214. See also Anatomy,

Descriptive and Surgical; female bodies, death and power cases of; Morton, Samuel George death, 29, 59, 99, 113–14, 123, 137, 139–41, 143, 152–54, 157, 160n33. See also female bodies, death and power cases of Death With Dignity Act (DWDA), 141, 158n12 debilitated/debilitation. See female bodies, death and power cases of Decade of the Brain, 50n16 Dechéne, Charissa, 231n4 Declaration of Independence, U.S., 2, 3 “Deera Mubaric” (fictional character), 234n52 DeFrantz, Thomas, 195 Degas, Edgar, 188 dehumanization, 11, 33, 62–69, 215–16, 226–27. See also violence, dehumanization and Delaware, 4 Delaware Nation, 4–5 Demetrias, 53n57 Denver International Airport, 10–11 Descartes, René, 191–92 desecration, 31–33 Desmond, Jane, 186–87 deviant bodies, 9, 12–13, 75–76, 119–21, 120 diagnosis, 9, 37, 153, 160n36 direct violence, 175–77 disability, 116n49, 215, 225 Disability Theory (Siebers), 50n21 discourse, 207–10 discrimination, 1, 39–40, 81, 165, 192, 229 discursive, discursive construction of, 69, 174, 220, 227 “Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race” (Cartwright), 181n10 dismember/dismemberment, 209–10, 213, 215–16. See also Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical

244

Index

doctor: “AutoDoc” (fictional medical device), 220; Doctor Who, 205; “MedPod” (fictional medical device), 227–28 Doctor Death (Kevorkian, Jack), 140 “Dr. Bill Cortner” (fictional character), 211–16, 214 “Doctor Spielsberg” (fictional character), 105–6 Doctor Who, 205 “Doris” (fictional character), 213–16, 214 Dorrance, Michelle, 14, 165–66, 183–84, 187, 195–96 Douglass, Frederick, 3 doxa, 8–11 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 180n4 Dracula (Stoker), 99, 100–101, 110–11 Du Bois, W. E. B., The Philadelphia Negro by, 5 Duncan, Isadora, 189 Dunham, Katherine, 186–87 DWDA. See Death With Dignity Act Earth, 45, 120, 203, 217–20, 222, 224, 230–31 Easter, Ethel, 179 Eastern Europe, 100–101 Edwards, Dormeshia Sumbry, 197n16 Egypt, 40, 88, 210–11, 222 Eichmann, Otto Adolf, 31 Einsatzgruppen. See Operational Groups Elena Rodriguez, Jose Antonio, 10–11 “Elizabeth Shaw” (fictional character), 222–28 Elssler, Fanny, 188 emotional distance, 22–24 Endeavour Space Shuttle, 202–3 end-of-life patient, 76. See also female bodies, death and power cases of Engineers, 222–25 England, 208–9 English, “Laura” (fictional character) as, 102–3

Enlightenment philosophy, 38, 50n21, 80, 100 enslavement, Tubman escaping from, 2–3 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 132n1, 133n3 Ephesians 6:17, 53n46 Equiano, Olaudah, 208–9 Erasistratus of Ceos, 40, 41, 46 erasure, 39, 44–47, 171–74, 181, 204, 212 ethical pledge, body as, 154–55 ethnic dance, 186–87, 192 ethnocentrism, 104–105, 112, 189, 194–95 ethnography, 123–24, 184 ethnoracial subordination, 227 Euro-American students, 197n12 Eurocentrism, 187, 192, 194–95, 231 Europe, 51n27, 81, 87, 100–101, 186– 87, 226–27 Europeans, 178, 196n5, 233n48; colonizers as, 4; cultural constellation as, 197n14; Engineers bearing resemblance to, 223–24; racial classifications of, 80–83, 83, 84 Evans, Albert, 196n1 examination, 173 executive functions, of brain, 47–48 extra-human authority, 206 Facebook, 7 facilitative claim: definition of, 21; dehumanized body and, 30–33; humanist assumption calling into question, 25–27; overview of, 21 family control: provider control versus, 145–47, 146, 147; state control versus, 148–50, 149 family mistrust, of medical science, 150–54, 151, 152 fast-tracking, 123, 133n3 female bodies, as beautiful, 13–14, 165– 66, 210–16, 214, 224–25. See also



Index 245

Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical; ballet and tap, butts and bodies in female bodies, death and power cases of: Aden, 160n33; Bouvia, 143–45, 144; Cruzan, 148–50, 149, 155; image in, 154–58; law evolution and, 139–43; McMath, 152–54; medicine evolution and, 139–43; overview of, 137–39; Quinlan, 145–47, 146, 147; Schiavo, 150–51, 152, 155 female brain, 39 female futures, speculative outlook on, 228–31 female vampires: incest of, 106–7; Irish folklore influencing, 101–7; miscegenation of, 106–10; overview of, 99–100. See also Carmilla; Fledgling femicide, of women, 216–20 feminism, intersectionality influencing, 15n3 feminists: ballet criticized by, 187–88; Frankenstein discourse of, 207–10; intersectional, 1–5; on reanimation science, 207–10; in West Philadelphia, 1–5 Ferguson, Missouri, 26 “Fifield” (fictional character), 222–23 Fillmore neighborhood, 122 First Position, 197n10 fixes, for discrimination, 165 Flaherty, Molly, 63 Fledgling (Butler, O.), 12–13; Carmilla compared with, 110–11, 112–14; Dracula compared with, 110–11; overview of, 99–100, 101, 107–12 Florida, 150–51, 152, 155 fMRI. See functional magnetic resonance imaging folk forms (dance), 186–87 “Ford” (fictional character), 221–22 forethought, 206, 223, 224 formality, 128–30 Fort Mitchell, Alabama, 87 Foster, George, 208–9

Foucault, Michel, 125–26, 191 Frankenstein (Shelley), 206, 228; The Brain That Wouldn’t Die compared with, 215; as feminist discourse, 207–10; overview of, 203–4 Freedom Is a Constant Struggle (Davis), 67–69 Freire, Paulo, 14 Freud, Sigmund, 173 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 49–50nn14–15 Furrow, Barry, 13 G4S, 70, 72n13 Galatea, 219–20, 233n45 Galen and the Rhetoric of Healing (Mattern), 52n38, 54n61 Galen of Pergamum, 40–41, 42–43, 45–46, 51–52nn30–34, 52nn36–39, 54n61, 54n64, 210 Galen on the Brain (Rocca), 51n30 Gall, Franz Joseph, 81 Galvinism, 208–9, 211–16, 214 Gautier, Théophile, 188 gaze, 173, 191 gender, 116n49; binary/binarism, 61–62, 205–7; cis, 50n15, 62, 64; genderqueer, 70–71; oppression of, 66–71; STEM disparities in, 205–6; trans, 12, 50n15; transing of, 61–62, 67–69. See also McDonald, CeCe “General Spielsdorf” (fictional character), 105–6 geniuses, idiots and, 81 genocide, 4, 11, 19, 25–26, 28–29 genre, 54n67, 165–66, 169–70, 180n3, 197n17, 202–4, 228–29. See also ballet and tap, butts and bodies in; vampires gentrification. See San Francisco, California, redevelopment and gentrification in Gérôme, Jean-Léon, 233n45 Ghana, 3 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, 229

246

Gleason, Maud, 51n30 Gliddon, George, 86, 90 Glover, Savion, 193–94, 197n16 God, 43–47, 77–78, 189 Goodwin, Marjorie, 5 Gothic genre, 102 Gottlieb, Lisa, 10–11 Gottschild, Brenda Dixon, 195, 196n5, 197n14 Gould, Stephen J., 78–80, 90 Goyette, Sharon Ramos, 229 Grau, Andreé, 188–89, 191–92 Gray, Henry, 13–14, 180n6, 180n9, 181n10. See also Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical Gray, J. Glenn, 23–24, 26–27, 30–33 Gray, Lloyd Skanahwati, 10–11 Gray, Thomas Kanewakeron, 10–11 Great Britain, 90, 101–7 Greco-Roman literature, 46–47 Greco-Roman mythologies, 233n46 Greeks, 11–12, 40–42, 46–47, 210–11, 228, 233n46 Green, Jill, 188, 191–92 Greene, Laurie, 16n11 Gregory of Nyssa, 42–43, 45–46, 54n63, 54n75 Grossman, David, 23, 25, 28, 31 groups, human, 69 growth machine, 119–20, 132 Hailu, Aden, 154, 160n33 Hall of Shame award, 120 Hanna, Judith Lynn, 196n4 Haraway, Donna, 203–4, 217 Harding, Vincent, 15n5 Harker, Jonathan, 101 Harvey Milk Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Democratic Club, 60 Havana, Cuba, 87–90 hegemony, 11, 38–40, 47–48, 101, 106–7, 112, 127, 184, 208 HeLa cells, 156 Heller, Tamar, 112

Index

helmet of salvation, 42–43, 53n46 hemo-purity, 106, 114 Herophilus of Chalcedon, 40, 51nn28–29 heterosexuality, 115n10 hexameral sermon, 54n67 Hexameron (Basil of Caesarea), 52n40 hibernation, 217–20 Himmler, Heinrich, 27–28, 31 Hines, Gregory, 193–94 Hodgkin, Thomas, 85 Holocaust, 27–28, 29–30 home, 139–41, 222 “Homestead II” (fictional colony), 217–20 homophobia, transphobia intersecting with, 70–71 homosexual, Wilde as, 100–101 hoofing, tap distinguished from, 197n18 Hottentot, 81, 177, 178. See also Baartman, Sara Houston, Texas, 179 Houston Ballet, 183 human: category of, 69; humanizing, 42–43, 47–48; inhuman, 22–27, 48; intrahuman, 48; nonhuman, 24, 26–27, 31, 35n32, 215–16, 223–29; subhuman, 22–34 humanism: facilitative claim called into question by, 25–27; violence, dehumanization, and, 24–27 humanity, of McDonald, 62–66 humanizing: of brain, 42–43, 47–48; in Christianity, 42–43, 47–48 Hunters Point U.S. Naval Shipyard, 119–21, 120, 122–23, 126–32 Hurston, Zora Neale, 186–87 Hutu, 28, 31 Hymes, Dell, 5 idiots, geniuses and, 81 Illinois, 72n10 image, in female body death and power cases, 154–58 Imarisha, Walidah, 231



Index 247

immigration crisis, U.S., 10–11 immorality, verticality influencing, 189 immortal/immortality, 29, 156, 229. See also Prometheus “Ina” (Fledgling), 107–12, 113–14 incarcerated transwomen of color, 61, 71n3. See also McDonald, CeCe incest, of female vampires, 106–7 Independence Hall (Philadelphia), 3 Independence Square (Philadelphia), 15n5 indigenous dance, 186–87 Indigenous peoples, 4–5 Indo-European, 206, 223–24 infertility, White womanhood detracted from by, 225–26 Ingram, Germaine, 196n6 inlet, of pelvis, 177–78 Intelligence Quotient (IQ), 78–80 Interahamwe. See paramilitary organization internment, of Japanese Americans, 201–2 intersectional feminists, in West Philadelphia, 1–5 intersectionality/intersectional, 15n3, 71n5 intricate rite of transition, 9 “Iosif Petrescu” (fictional character), 110–11 IQ. See Intelligence Quotient Ireland, 12, 85, 101–7 “I See America Dancing” (Duncan), 189 Isla Vista, California, 25 Isle of Skye, 223–24 Italy, 40–41 Jackson, Christina, 6, 71n4 Jahi McMath Shadow Effect, 153–54 “Jan” (fictional character), 212–16, 214, 224–25 “Janek” (fictional character), 221–22 Japanese Americans, internment of, 201–2 Japanese forces, 23–24

Jazz rhythm, 189 Jemison, Mae, 202, 204, 205, 229 Jerome, 53n57 Jews, 25–26, 156, 211 “Jim Preston” (fictional character), 217–20 “Joan Braithwaite” (fictional character), 110–11 Johnson, Bessie, 129–30 Jowitt, Deborah, 187 Józefów massacre, 29 Judge, Ona, 3 Kames (Lord), 81 “Karnstein family” (fictional characters), 103–4 “Katharine Dahlman” (fictional character), 108–9, 110, 112 Keali’inohomoku, Joann, 185–87 Kelly, Gene, 197n18 Kenya, 69 Kevorkian, Jack, 140 killing, 28–30; murder distinguished from, 23–24; overview of, 19; PTSD induced by, 35n43. See also facilitative claim King, Martin Luther, Jr., 60, 201 Kinyarwanda, 28–30 Kitzinger, Celia, 157–58 Kitzinger, Jenny, 157–58 Kroll-Smith, Steve, 125 Kümbet, Pelin, 110–12 “Kurt” (fictional character), 212, 215 Labov, William, 5 Lacks, Henrietta, 156, 211 Lactantius, 45–46 Lang, Berel, 21–22 “Languages of Fear, Racism, and Zombies,” 6 Las Vegas, Nevada, 37–38 late antiquity, 53n43 Latin Americans, 197n12, 227, 230 “Laura” (fictional character), 102–7, 110–11, 112–14

248

Index

Lausiac History (Palladius of Galatia), 53n56 law, evolution of, 139–43 Lawson, Thomas, 87 Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan, Irish folklore familiarity of, 101–7. See also Carmilla Lenape, 4–5 Lennar Corporation, 121, 132n2 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), 12, 64–65. See also McDonald, CeCe lesbianism. See Carmilla Lessl, Thomas, 206, 222 Levine, George, 172–73 LGBT. See lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender “Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu” (fictional character), 201–2 “Lieutenant Nyota Uhura” (fictional character), 201–2, 204–5, 231 life-sustaining treatments, 142, 157–58 lightning rod, body as, 156–57 light-skinned/lighter skinned dancer, 195–96 light-year, 233n40 liminal beings, in ambiguous zone, 157–58 London, England, 170, 185, 208–9 Lorde, Audre, 9–11 “Lord Ruthven” (fictional character), 100 “Luke Skywalker” (fictional character), 204 Macarius of Alexandria, 43 Maclure, William, 86 MacNair, Rachel, 35n43, 35n53 Mad Scientist, 206, 212–16, 214, 219–20 The Making and Unmaking of Race, 6 male brain, 39 male subscribers (abonnés), 188 Manne, Kate, 24–27, 31, 35n32 “Marilyn Vickers” (fictional character), 222, 227–28

Marine Corps, U.S., 31–32 Mars, 230–31 masculinity, San Francisco redevelopment and gentrification and, 127–28 Massachusetts, Presley representing, 179 mass atrocities, Smith surveying, 34n8 mass shooter/mass shooting: mental illnesses associated with, 49nn9–10; Paddock, 37–38, 47–48; racialization of, 49n9 The Matrix, 231n7 Mattern, Susan P., 54n61 The Matter of Black Lives Workshop, 71n4 “Matthews family” (fictional characters), 108 Maynard, Brittany, 140–41 Mays, Vickie M., 49n6 McCarthy-Brown, Nyama, 192 McDonald, CeCe, 12; Davis echoed by, 63–69, 70–71; humanity of, 62–66; oppression ended by, 66–71; overview of, 59–62, 69–71; at S14 Socialism Conference, 62–68; violence defining, 63–68; womanhood of, 62–69 McGinty, E. Elizabeth, 49n6 McKitty, Taquisha, 154 McMath, Jahi, 138, 152–54 McMath case, 152–54, 157 The Meaning of Freedom and Other Difficult Dialogues (Davis), 61–62 media accelerant, body as, 155–56 medical science, family mistrust of, 150–54, 151, 152 medical textbook, 180n3. See also Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical medical treatment, patient autonomy and, 143–45, 144 medicine, evolution of, 139–43 “MedPod” (fictional medical device), 227–28 memory, 30, 42, 157–58, 233n42



Index 249

mental health stakeholders, mental illnesses debunked by, 49n6 “Mental Illness and Reduction of Gun Violence and Suicide” (Swanson, McGinty, Fazel, and Mays), 49n6 mental illnesses: mass shootings associated with, 49nn9–10; mental health stakeholders debunking, 49n6; racialization of, 49n9; U.S. on, 48n5; violence led to by, 37–38, 48n5 mentally disabled, sterilization of, 211–12 mentally unfit, reproduction of, 78–80 Merchant, Carolyn, 226–27 Merion, Iris, 123 Mesopotamia, 210, 222 Messeri, Lisa, 202–3, 233n43 Metamorphoses, 219–20 #MeToo, 115, 229 Metzl, Jonathan M., 49n10 Mexico, 10–11 Meyer, Stephanie, 13, 114 Michael, John S., 12 Minneapolis, Minnesota. See McDonald, CeCe “Mircalla” (fictional character), 103–4 miscegenation, 12, 104–105, 106–10, 112, 115n15. See also consanguinity The Mismeasure of Man (Gould), 78–80 Mission neighborhood, 122 Missouri, 26, 148–50, 149, 155 Mitchell, Arthur, 196n1 Mitchell, Paul Wolff, 6, 12 Mohawk, 10–11 monogenism, polygenism contesting, 81 Moon, Apollo 11 landing on, 202 moral distance, 25 morality, verticality influencing, 189 “Morality, Race, and the Body,” 6–8, 14 Morton, James, 85 Morton, Samuel George, 6, 39; on brain, 92n35; case of, 77–80; conscious bias of, 87–90; craniology and, 82–83, 83, 84, 92n28; ideology of, 82–83, 83, 84; intentions of, 89–90;

motivations of, 85–87; overview of, 77–80, 89–90, 92n25; in Philadelphia, 85–86, 92n25, 92n28, 181n10; slavery motivating, 12, 79–80, 85–90 mother, to alien life, 220–22 Mount Olympus, Prometheus stealing from, 206–7 multidimensionality, 1 murder: arrested on, 59; in Fledgling, 108–109; Kevorkian convicted of, 140; killing distinguished from, 23–24; overview of, 19; Thomason on, 11; of transgender women, 68 Murder Act (1752), 208 Musk, Elon, 230–31 Nairobi, Kenya, 69 National Black Convention, 15n5 National Museum of African American History and Culture (Smithsonian), 197n13 National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), 204 Nation of Islam, 127–28 Native Americans, 10–11, 87, 229–30 Nature, Proctor on, 77–78 Navy, U.S., 13, 133n5; Hunters Point U.S. Naval Shipyard, 119–21, 120, 122–23, 126–32 Nazis, 25–26, 27–28, 29–30, 31 Negro skulls, 88–90 Nelson, Rashon, 8–9 Nemesius of Emesa, 41–42, 44–46, 52n35, 53n48, 54n66, 54n71 neoliberal age, 60 “The Neuroanatomy of Herophilus” (Pearce), 51n28 Nevada, 37–38, 160n33 New Jersey, 71n4, 145–47, 146, 147, 153–54 New York, 2–3, 196n1 Nicholas, Fayard, 194–95 Nichols, Nichelle, 201–2 niggerology, 86

250

Index

9-1-1 response system, 141 Noah, Barbara, 153–54 Noble, Bobby, 62 Nogales, Mexico, 10–11 non-being, 172–73 non-Whites: Shori Matthews as, 101, 108–14; White race polluted by, 90 normalization, 8–11, 64, 68, 75 normative/normativity, 8–11, 15, 19–20, 64–69, 75–76, 174–77, 197n18; heteronormative/heteronormativity, 112, 115n10, 212–16, 214, 219–20; NSBE influencing, 204; in science fiction, 202–3, 212–16, 214, 219–20, 221, 230–31. See also female vampires Nott, Josiah Clark, 86 NSBE. See National Society of Black Engineers Oakland, California, 152–53 Obama, Barack, 183 objectivity, 78, 80, 168, 172–73, 209 Octavia’s Brood (Imarisha), 231 Ohio, 10–11 Old City (Philadelphia), 3 Ontario (Canada), 2–3 “On the Brain of the Negro” (Tiedemann), 92n32 On the Constitution of the Human Being (Gregory of Nyssa), 54n75 “On the Governing Soul” (Tertullian of Carthage), 46–47 On the Making of Man (Gregory of Nyssa), 54n63 On the Nature of the Human Being (Nemesius of Emesa), 44, 52n35, 53n48, 54n66, 54n71 On the Opinions of Hippocrates and Plato (Galen of Pergamum), 52nn36–37 On the Soul (Tertullian of Carthage), 46–47, 51n29 On the Statues (Chrysostom), 54n63

On the Usefulness of the Parts (Galen of Pergamum), 54n64 Opéra National de Paris, 188 Operational Groups (Einsatzgruppen), 29, 31, 35n43 oppression, 66–71 Orange Is the New Black, 60 Oregon, 140–41, 158n12 The Originals, 114 Other/Othering, 27, 64–65 overlexification, 205 Ovid, 219–20 ox, brains of, 52n32 Pacific, 23–24 Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), 120 Paddock, Stephen, 37–38, 47–48 Palestine, liberation of, 70–71 Palladius of Galatia, 53n56 pansexual, 101, 108–14 pansexuality, 115n11 paramilitary organization (Interahamwe), 28–29, 30, 31 Parrish, Joseph, 85 Passengers, 216–20, 221 passing, 72n12 passivity, 171–74, 180n9 patient autonomy, medical treatment and, 143–45, 144 patient loss of control, technology and, 141 patriarchy/patriarchal, 101, 112, 206, 209–10, 213–16, 214, 230. See also Carmilla; Fledgling Patterson, Henry, 77 Patton, Tracey Owens, 191–92, 197n12, 197n18 “Pauling MedPod” (fictional medical device), 227–28 payback, 32 Pearce, J. M., 51n28 pelvises, 177–78 Penn, William, 4 Penn Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, 6–8, 92n28



Index 251

Pennsylvania. See Philadelphia, Pennsylvania perfect woman, 213, 218–20 persistent vegetative state, 141, 145–58, 146, 147, 149, 151, 152 “Peter Weyland” (fictional character), 222, 228 “Petrescus” (fictional characters), 108 PG&E. See Pacific Gas and Electric Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1–5, 14, 39; dance class in, 187; discussions of, 5–8; Harding on, 15n5; Morton, S., in, 85–86, 92n25, 92n28, 181n10; scientific racism in, 12; Starbucks in, 8–11 The Philadelphia Negro (Du Bois), 5 phrenology, 81, 82, 91n21 physician-assisted suicide, White women influencing, 13, 140, 157–58 Pickens, Therí, 109–10, 116n49 “Plan of the Development of the Foot” (Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical), 174–77 Plenty of Good Women Dancers, 195 Poland, 29–30, 31 Polidori, John, 99, 100, 101 politicization, of dying, 143 polluters, 90 polyamory/polyamorous, 99, 111, 115n5. See also Fledgling polygenism, monogenism contested by, 81 Pope, Thaddeus, 153–54 port de bras. See arm movements Posidonius of Byzantium, 41–42 post-racial/post-racialism, 183, 196 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 35n43, 35n53 Presley, Ayanna, 179 prison: abolition of, 70–71; industrial complex, 12, 70–71, 71n3, 72n13 Proctor, Robert, 77–78 Prometheus, 210, 215–16, 219–20, 223, 224, 228–29; as Brometheus, 231;

Mount Olympus stolen from by, 206–7 Prometheus, 206–7, 220–28 provider control, family control versus, 145–47, 146, 147 psychosis, Abu-Jamal on, 204 PTSD. See post-traumatic stress disorder public comment, San Francisco redevelopment and gentrification, limitations of, 130–32 Puerto Rico, 211–12 Pugach, Sara, 233n48 Pygmalion, 219–20, 233n45 Quebec, 9 Quinlan, Karen Ann, 138, 141, 145–47, 146, 147 Quinlan case, 143, 145–47, 146, 147 “Quinn Mallory” (fictional character), 234n52 race, 116n49, 157; on brain, 80–81; discourses of, 11; science, 78; supremacist, 86–87. See also Morton, Samuel George; Tiedemann, Friedrich racial classifications, European, 80–83, 83, 84 Racial Hygiene (Proctor), 77–78 racialization/racialized/racializing, 9–11; of mass shootings, 49n9; medical abuse, 156; of mental illnesses, 49n9; oppression of, 66–71 racial tracking, 197n12 racism/racist, 194–95; anti-, 1, 15n3, 78, 85–87; of Duncan, 189; countering, 202; environmental, 119–20, 120; Patton coming up against, 191–92; scientific, 39, 75–76; structural, 67; systemic, 183–96; transphobia intersecting with, 70–71. See also Morton, Samuel George; San Francisco, California; scientific racism; Tiedemann, Friedrich

252

Index

rape/raped, 28, 31, 63–64, 215; culture of, 114–115 rational autonomy, as Enlightenment theory, 50n21 rational mind, criminal body vs., 11–12, 19–20 “Ravel” (fictional character), 221–22 reanimation science, 206–7; of alien life, 220–28; of animal, 210–16, 2 14; definition of, 203; femicide as, 216–20; feminist discourse on, 207–10; overview of, 203–4, 228–31 rebels, U.S. as, 204 redevelopment. See San Francisco, California, redevelopment and gentrification in rehumanization, 33 “Renfield” (fictional character), 99 resurrectionists, 208 Retzius, Anders, 87 reverence (ballet), 190 Rice, Tamir, 10–11 Richardson, Ruth, 171–73 Richter, Kat, 14 Ride, Sally, 202 rights, of White women, 68–69. See also female bodies, death and power cases of right-to-die cases, 13, 141, 148, 151 rite of transition, 9 Riverside, California, 143–45, 144 Robinson, Dante, 8–9 Rocca, Julius, 51n30 Rodger, Elliot, 25, 26 Rodriguez Cisneros, Don José, 87–90 Romans, 11–12, 46–47, 51n27, 53n57, 233n46 Rome, Italy, 40–41 ‘Round the Red Lamp (Doyle), 180n4 Royal Society, 82–83, 83, 84 Russell, Andrew, 230–31 “Russell Silk” (fictional character), 109 Rustin, Bayard, 60 Rwandan Genocide, 28–29

S14 Socialism Conference, McDonald at, 62–68 St. Petersburg, Florida, 150–51, 152 Samuel G. Morton Cranial Collection, 6, 92n28 San Francisco, California, 13; overview of, 119–21, 120; TOCB in, 133n4 San Francisco, California, redevelopment and gentrification in: body turn in, 124–27; Brown people influenced by, 123, 124–25; discussion in, 128–30; ethnography influencing, 123–24; formality in, 128–30; masculinity and, 127–28; overview of, 121–23; politicaleconomic landscape of, 124–27; public comment limited in, 130–32; subversion in, 128–30; vulnerability in, 123–24 Saville, Margaret, 209 Say Yes to the Dress, 189 Schelling, Friedrich, 91n22 Schiavo, Theresa Marie Schindler, 13, 138, 150–51, 152, 155 Schiavo case, 143, 150–51, 152, 155, 157 schloss. See castle Schmitz, Dean, 63 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), 205–6, 230. See also reanimation science science fact, science fiction as, 201–4 science fiction: as science fact, 201–4; women in, 203–7 scientific atlases, 180n5 scientific racism: brain supporting, 39; definition of, 78; legacies of, 15, 80; in Philadelphia, 12. See also Morton, Samuel George scientist: female, 205–6, 234n52; mad, 206, 212–16, 214, 219–20 Scott-Heron, Gil, 230–31 Second Creek War (1836–1837), 87 self-annihilation, 172–73



Index 253

self-contained subject, as Western psychiatry misconception, 50n21 self-gaze, 173–74 Senf, Carol A., 100, 107 Serano, Julia, 71n6, 72n12 sexual assault, abuse and, 62–66. See also rape/raped sexual exploitation, dance linked to, 188 sexual relations, 225–27 Shelley, Mary. See Frankenstein “Sherlock Holmes” (fictional character), 180n4 Shewmon, Alan, 153 “Shock and Awe” (Gleason), 51n30 “Shori Matthews” (fictional character), 101, 108–14 Siebers, Tobin, 50n21 “Silk family” (fictional characters), 108–10 Sites, Kevin, 31–32 Skal, David J., 100–101 slavery, 2, 194; apology for, 89–90; Morton, S., motivated by, 12, 79–80, 85–90; prison-industrial complex continuing, 71n3 Sleeping Beauties, 146, 146–47, 147, 157, 158 Sliders, 234n52 Smith, David Livingstone, 23–24, 27–28, 34n8, 35n32 Smithsonian Institution, 197n13 Snow Whites, 146, 146–47, 147, 157–58 social violence, 177–78, 179 sociocultural linguist, 1–5, 203, 208, 227 sociocultural linguistics, 6 Solomon, Andrew, 140 Sommer, Sally, 194 “Sophia Bursett” (fictional character), 60 South Carolina, 194 Southwest Airlines, 10–11 space: domestic, 114; Force, 230–31; green, 121; liminal, 99; meeting,

128; outer space, 201–5, 216–22, 230–31, 233n43; reproductive, 101; spaceship, 165, 202, 221–22, 224–28, 233n42; urban, 120 Space Race, Star Trek buoying, 202–3 Space Shuttle Endeavour, 202–3 “Speaking about gun violence with Dr. Jonathan Metzl” (Cobb), 49n10 Speakman, John, 85–86 specimens, of Morton, S., 89–90 speculative: fabulation, 202; fiction, 202–31, 214; futures, 228–31 speech, 45–46, 52n35, 52nn36–37 “Spike” (fictional character), 114 spirituality, verticality’s connection to, 189 Stanford University, 37–38 Stangl, Franz, 29–30, 31 Starbucks, 8–11 starliner, 217–20 Star Trek, 201–3 Star Wars, 204, 206 stasis, 221, 226–27, 233n42 state control, family control versus, 148–50, 149 STEM. See science, technology, engineering, and mathematics sterilization, of mentally disabled, 211–12 Stevens (U.S. Supreme Court Justice), 155 Stockholm Syndrome, 220 Stockton University, 71n4 Stoker, Bram, 99, 100–101, 101–2, 110–11 Stono slave rebellion (1739), 194 “The Struggle for Trans Liberation,” 63–68 studied neutrality, 172–73 subversion, 128–30 Superfund, 119, 132n1 Supreme Court, U.S., 148–50, 149, 155, 229 surgeon, as spectre, 171–74

254

Index

surgery: dissection, 13–14, 40–42, 46–47, 51n30, 52n32, 52n34, 80–81, 181n10, 208; gender-affirming, 60; sex reassignment, 71n1. See also Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical Surgical Anatomy, 175–77 surgical textbook, as Victorian, 169–71, 180n3. See also Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical Susquehanna, 4–5 Swaab, Dick, 38 Swanson, Jeffrey W., 49n6 Swarthmore College Department of Linguistics, 6 symbol/symbolic/symbolism, 3–5, 10, 15n5, 207, 212, 223–24, 226–28, 233n46; Adinkra, 3; of trophies, 32. See also brain; vampires Taglioni, Marie, 188 Takei, George, 201–2 Taking Our Community Back (TOCB), 127–28, 133n4 Tap, 193, 194 tap dancing, 192–95, 196n6, 197– 98nn15–19. See also ballet and tap, butts and bodies in technofix, 217 technology, patient loss of control and, 141 terminal illness, 142 “Terminology” (Serano), 71n6, 72n12 Terri Schiavo Life and Hope Network, 153 Tertullian of Carthage, 46–47, 51n29 Texas, 10–11, 37, 179 TGIJP. See Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex Justice Project “Theodora” (fictional character), 111–12 Theodoret of Cyrrhus, 43, 53n54 There is a River (Harding), 15n5 thinkery (cogitatorium), 46–47 Thomas, Jamie A., 6–7, 14, 171 Thomas, Debi, 231n4 Thomason, Krista K., 11, 64

Thoughts on the Original Unity of the Human Race (Caldwell), 86 Tiedemann, Friedrich, 78, 85, 88–90; on brain, 92n32; craniology and, 82–83, 83, 84; ideology of, 82–83, 83, 84; overview of, 91n22 TOCB. See Taking Our Community Back Toddlers and Tiaras, 189 torture, 31, 125, 206–207 Tracy, Robert, 102, 104–5 trans: feminism/feminist, 12, 61–62; feminism of color, 62; person/ people, 12, 62–69, 71n1; phobia, 66, 70–71; transing, 61–62, 67–69, 70–71; womanhood, 62–69; woman/ women, 12, 62–69, 71n1. See also McDonald, CeCe Transatlantic Trade, 3 Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP), 68–69 transition, 9 The Transmission of Affect (Brennan), 50n21 Treblinka, 29–30 Trump, Donald, 229–31 Tubman, Harriet, enslavement escaped by, 2–3 tucking in, 187–88 Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, 156, 211 Tutsis, 28, 31 The Twilight Saga (Meyer), 114 Tylor, Edward Burnett, 186 The Types of Mankind (Nott), 86 the uncanny, 26, 35n32 “Uncle Tom” (fictional character), 195 Underground Railroad, 2–3 undesirable body, deviant body and, 12–13, 75–76 United States (U.S.), 10–11, 67–69, 81, 90, 137, 204, 227; dance of, 14, 189; on mental illnesses, 48n5; prisonindustrial complex of, 12, 70, 71n3.



Index 255

See also ballet and tap, butts and bodies in; female bodies, death and power cases of University of California, Santa Barbara, 25 University of Edinburgh, 85 University of Pennsylvania Department of Anthropology, 7–8 University of Texas at Austin, 37–38 upward mobility, 186–87 urban redevelopment, 123. See also San Francisco, California U.S. See United States The Vampire Diaries, 114 vampires, 12–13, 115n15; in Britain, 101–7; epidemics of, 100; origins of, 100–101; overview of, 99–100, 114–15. See also female vampires The Vampyre (Polidori), 99, 100 varieties, racial, 80, 91n15 Vedado Farm, 87–90 vegetable, 141, 150. See also female bodies, death and power cases of Venus Hottentot, 80–81 verticality, 188–89 vessel of memory, body as, 157–58 Victor, Armstrong, 9 “Victor Frankenstein” (fictional character), 203, 207–10, 228 Victorian surgical textbook, 169–71, 180n3 Vidal, Fernando, 38, 50n20 Viet Cong, crucifixion of, 31–32 Vietnam War, 23, 31–32, 204 violence, 174–78; carceral, 62; McDonald defined by, 63–68; mental illness leading to, 37–38, 48n5; sexual, 62–65; transwomanhood influenced by, 62–69 violence, dehumanization and: body and, 27–30; emotional distance influenced by, 22–24; facilitative claim and, 30–33; humanism and, 24–27; overview of, 21–22, 33–34

visibility, invisibility, 172–79, 188, 195 visionary fiction, 231 Voltaire, 81 Waller, James, 25–26 Warren, Elizabeth, 229–30 Washington, George, 3–4 Weber, Tina, 156 weigh-ins, 191, 197n11 Western civilization, animacy influenced by, 203–4 Western concert dance, 186–87 Western Europe, Roman empire in, 51n27 Western psychiatry, self-contained subject as misconception of, 50n21 Western standards of beauty, 13–14, 165–66, 210–16, 214, 224–25 West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1–5 “Weyland Corporation” (fictional entity), 222–28 White-male-ness, 9–11 Whites, 156–58, 230–31; abortion denied by, 226–27; American, 138–58, 144, 146, 147, 149, 151, 152; Blacks influenced by, 15n5, 224; Count Dracula as, 100–101, 113–14; Dorrance as, 14, 165–66, 183–84, 187, 195–96; non-Whites polluting, 90; in Oregon, 158n12; privilege, 109–10, 191–92; tap influenced by, 198n19; woman/women, 13, 68–69, 225–26. See also Morton, Samuel George White supremacist, U.S. as, 67–69 “Whitey on the Moon,” 230–31 Whitman, Charles, 37 Wilde, Oscar, 100–101 Williams, Evelyn, 131 Willie (reverend), 71n4 Willis, Cheryl, 192 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 201, 208–9 womanhood, of McDonald, 62–69 women: animacies of, 203–4, 226–28; as animal, 210–16, 214; beautiful body of, 13–14, 165–66, 210–16,

256

214, 224–25; Dorrance as, 14, 165– 66, 183–84, 187, 195–96; femicide of, 216–20; groups pertained to by, 69; as perfect, 219–20; in science fiction, 203–7; in Sliders, 234n52; transing of, 61–62, 67–69, 70–71; transwomen, 12, 62–69, 71n1; as vampires, 12–13; White, 13, 68–69, 157–58, 225–26. See also Davis, Angela Y.; female bodies, death and power cases of; McDonald, CeCe worlding, 202–3, 221 World War II: Nazis in, 25–26, 27–28, 29–30, 31; Pacific in, 23–24; Takei during, 201–2

Index

worthy expression (dance), of Duncan, 189 Wouk, Herman, 23–24 Wright, Jessica, 11–12 “Wright” (fictional character), 108–10 Wu, Jessica, 15n1 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) meeting room, 127–30 Zeller, Jessica, 197n9 Zeus, 206–7, 219–20 zombies, 6, 7, 24, 31–34, 158, 203, 219

About the Contributors

Emily August is assistant professor of literature at Stockton University, where she teaches in nineteenth-century British literature, medical humanities, and creative writing. Her academic research focuses on how representations of surgery and medicine in nineteenth-century literature telegraph contemporary ideologies about the body. Her poetry uses the language of medicine and anatomical duress to explore a family history of domestic violence. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Callaloo, Southern Humanities Review, Ninth Letter, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and other journals. Ute Bettray is visiting assistant professor of German and gender studies at Lafayette College, and an affiliate of the Max Kade Center for German Studies. She teaches German, in addition to courses on gender, sexuality, and feminisms, and is currently completing her first book, entitled When Black Feminist Thought Meets Transnational Transfeminism. Dorisa Costello is assistant professor of English Literature and Linguistics at Vilnius University in Vilnius, Lithuania. She is the author of “The Second Eric Sanderson: Multi-textuality, Identity, and Memory in Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts” and “Undead Corpse/ Corpus: Textual Transmission and Judith Butler’s Ek-static Subject in Le Fanu’s Carmilla.” Her research interests include speculative fiction, the gothic, women writers, and explorations of sexuality and gender in literature and media. Barry Furrow is professor of law and director of the health law program at the Kline School of Law at Drexel University. He is the lead author of Health Law: Cases, Materials and Problems, now in its eighth edition, and more 257

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About the Contributors

than four dozen articles, book chapters, and essays, including “Smashing into Windows: Limits of Consumer Sovereignty in Health Care.” Christina Jackson is assistant professor of sociology at Stockton University. Her research and teaching area include urban sociology, inequality, intersectionality, redevelopment, and gentrification. She is the co-author of the forthcoming book, Black in America: The Paradox of the Color Line. She has authored articles in books such as Black California Dreamin’: The Crises of California’s African-American Communities, The Ghetto: Contemporary Global Issues and Controversies, and journals such as Sociology Compass and The Journal of Urban Affairs. She is also a Philadelphia-based community arts and cultural facilitator, and a community board member of Camp Sojourner, a girls’ leadership camp. John S. Michael is a professional demographer and a Consulting Scholar with the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. His research focuses on the history of pre-Darwinian anthropology, specifically the craniological research of S. G. Morton of Philadelphia and J. F. Blumenbach of Göttingen, Germany. He has published in Current Anthropology and NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin. Paul Wolff Mitchell is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and a research associate in the Physical Anthropology Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. He has authored articles on human evolution and the history of physical anthropology and evolutionary biology. His dissertation takes a bio-historical approach to craniological collections and their use in producing knowledge and representations of race in nineteenth-century Europe and North America. Kat Richter is adjunct professor of dance at Stockton University and of cultural anthropology at Rowan College at Burlington County. She is also artistic director of The Lady Hoofers Tap Ensemble, a professional all-female tap company based in Philadelphia. Her publications include, “Anthropology with an Agenda: Four Forgotten Dance Anthropologists,” and “Tap Dancing on Tile: Sidestepping Failure at Guilford Elementary School.” Jamie A. Thomas is assistant professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College and visiting scholar in linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Zombies Speak Swahili, an ethnography of the undead, videogames, and the learning of Swahili across and beyond the Afri-



About the Contributors 259

can diaspora. Discourse, media, and identity are the subject of her additional publications, which highlight zombies, multilingualism, and translanguaging. She volunteers with Camp Sojourner, a girls’ leadership camp based in West Philadelphia. Krista K. Thomason is assistant professor of philosophy at Swarthmore College. Her areas of research include moral psychology and human rights. She is the author of Naked: The Dark Side of Shame and Moral Life. Jessica Wright is assistant professor of classics and medical humanities at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is the author of numerous articles, including “Crazy Talk: The Dangerous Rhetoric of Mental Illness” and “Between Despondency and the Demon: Diagnosing and Treating Spiritual Disorders in John Chrysostom’s Letter to Stageirios.”