14 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2022
    1. geopolitically rendered framework linked to these eugenic itineraries. In the pages to follow, the visual transmission of corporeal difference will remain crucial to the eugenic project and the demarcation of exclusions

      This is not really related the content, but I do want to mention that as someone with ADHD (among other things), I have trouble processing dense language like this, even if I look up all the words I don't know. I know that words like "eugenics" can't be replaced, since they're central to the message and very complicated (and explained in depth earlier on), but I think plain language can be really important when writing about disability history, as it allows for more disabled people to engage with our own stories.

    2. They appear in a sense as imaginary composites of names Page 72 →and data that appear elsewhere in the Public Health and Public Education archival files

      The imaginary here is painted to be much more frightening than what our reality may actually look like. This is effective in catching the attention of the reader, though it does not seem aware of its impact in other ways.

    3. messages of this kind clearly were numerous and found an audience.

      These kinds of messages both reinforce the existing, damaging rhetoric around disability as well as create one. It is actively contributing to a negative association betweenn alcohol, disability, and lifelong suffering.

    4. “Niños imbéciles, escrofulosos y epilépticos, o de instintos depravados, son con frecuencia hijos de alcohólicos.” [Imbecilic, scurvied, and epileptic children or those of depraved instincts are frequently the offspring of alcoholics] (Boletín 1.17).

      We see throughout the text that Antebi has given readers the original quotations in Spanish followed by a bracketed English translation. What is the effect of this particular writing choice?

    5. The figure of the alcoholic suggests both the cyclical quality of the Prometheus myth, since he is permanently bound to the rock, and the linear narrative of gradual, painful death and destruction, since eventually he will lose his entrails and die.

      The cyclical quality of the Prometheus myth also speaks to the cyclical, generational effects of alcoholism put forth by public health authorities. The hygiene campaigns posit that alcoholism impacts the next generation through contamination and disability, which then in turn affects the next generation, and so forth.

    6. Alcohol itself is side-stepped, at least for a moment, to allow capitalist exploitation to play a central role. In its helper role, alcohol works on behalf of the capitalist, yet the connection is an indirect one, for as the image shows, the man with the money bags sits comfortably, his whip to the ground, while his victims drink or sleep off their drunkenness. Rather than representing alcohol abuse as the specific cause of suffering on its own, the image and text suggest instead that drinking alcohol is a supplementary element within a larger process of economic exploitation. The destructive nature of alcohol here is due not simply to specific debilitating physical effects, but more importantly to its role in the impoverishment of individuals, households, and communities, hence as a means through which labor and needed resources seem to evaporate, as if magically transformed into money and then into drink.

      This is antithetical to the capitalist disdain for substance use as a means of seeking pleasure. Here, alcohol is described as a tool of capitalist exploitation. Yet, alcoholism can also be viewed as obstructing capitalistic exploitation through restricting an individual’s ability to effectively participate in productive activities.

    7. The uncertain shifting between clear and less clearly defined “cases” suggests a combined approach in which the “undesirable” elements are by turns hidden beneath layers of hereditary possibility and exposed as irrevocable fact. Moreover, specific use of the term “seres indeseables” [undesirable beings] underscores the notion that Page 82 →eugenics can work to shape a purportedly better future society by literally preventing the existence of certain types of people.

      This meditation on heredity makes me think about carrier screening and prenatal genetic testing as utilized in reproductive medicine today. These technologies are promoted as empowering reproductive freedom, but to what extent could eugenic forces underlie the push to make carrier screening and prenatal genetic screening/testing standard of care?

    8. the appropriate response to be taken in each case, whether the children can be best taught through special methods, sent to farms or workshops, or in the case of the “uneducable,” treated by physicians. In cases in which educational setting has been the problem, the response is to “combat the causes” of the abnormality

      In the previous section, poverty is described as a disabling force through structural violence. The 1927 Pan-American Child Congress acknowledged that "'The causes of poverty can in general be defeated through a concerted attack by society.'" Although this statement is rather vague, it essentially suggests that poverty should be addressed through a top-down approach. Yet Dr. Santamarina's "solutions" to "treat" developmentally delayed children all center on an individualistic approach rather than addressing systemic issues.

    9. disability, appearing through a repeating set of pathologizing terms, or at times through data and physical description,

      Institutions construct disabled children's identities out of assessment, diagnosis, documentation, and interventions--reducing disabled children to impersonal, generalized labels and functions. This objective and disembodied institutional documentation erases the humanity and personhood of these children.

    10. “El alcohol es un buitre que arrancará lentamente las entrañas del bebedor. El bebedor está siempre atado en la roca del infortunio.” [Alcohol is a vulture that slowly rips out the entrails of the drinker. The drinker is always tied to the rock of misfortune]

      This warning invokes the story of Prometheus--his punishment from Zeus for giving man the gift of fire was to be eternally chained to a rock and have his liver eaten every day by an eagle. It is interesting that this myth is referenced here wherein an authority figure (the public health department) seeks to punish "social deviants" (alcoholics). However, in this version, the authority figure does not take culpability for the punishment; instead, the alcohol users are framed as punishing themselves.

  2. Feb 2022
    1. detain the degeneration of the race

      This is interesting in that it seems pretty defeatist. The "race" will degenerate, but we can at least slow it down! I wonder if there's a sense in which "soft" eugenicists, in addition to blaming different factors and using different methods to combat them, are also "soft" in their aspirations. This is dramatically different from the "hard" eugenicists but also reform eugenicists--who did take environment into account--who were intent on creating supermen.

    2. The mestizo continues to be a key figure in this history, often illustrative of the ambivalence structuring the origin and location of particular human characteristics, as well as their perceived strengths and fragilities.

      Really interesting. I wonder to what degree the celebration of mestizaje was about the whitening of the population, away from Indigeneity, and to what degree it was really about celebrating racial mixtures. This reminds me of questions within Black eugenic thought of the early 20th century, with authors such as Pauline Hopkins celebrating racially mixed people/characters as the "highest" types (though she does have some non-mixed eugenically superior Black characters as well).

    3. because of natural repugnance, because of the disgust caused by constantly seeing all the suffering of those beings, more unfortunate than the blind, who feel no rays of intelligence penetrate their spirit

      The wording of this passage is such that it's not entirely clear who feel no rays of intelligence penetrate their spirit--mad people or blind people. "Rays" suggest light and link intelligence to vision, but the clause could also refer to mad people who cause such "repugnance." Either way, Dios Peza is justifying medical ableism by agreeing with its supposed causes.

  3. Mar 2021
    1. So, my disability was therefore a site of pedagogical tension

      Beautifully put and true for many disabled academics I've met.